I used to walk into work along Regents Canal everyday and pass a family of Coots; I always wondered how they managed to survive and with the amount of rubbish and pollution in the canal, what they ate - there are quite often people fishing in the canal but I have never seen anyone catch a fish. The Coots had built their nest out of all the crap that people had dumped in the Canal, shopping trolleys, old tyres, bits of packaging and bits of debris. It seemed wrong that they were living in a dirty environment but on the other hand it could also be seen as a triumph for nature adapting, surviving and overcoming rubbish conditions (literally). They looked chirpy enough; the dead dog floating past didn’t though.