CHAPTER LXXXII 

 THE COOT 



I 



In the Broadland a smug, cunning, selfish, greedy man is 

 ■contemptuously called "an old coot," and if it be said of 

 a young couple that they go into reed-bushes searching for 

 coots' eggs, their moral character is taken away. So the 

 coot's character is not held in high esteem, neither is his 

 flesh, as we shall see. 



In March coots begin to draw into the reed and gladen 

 beds for pairing ; then there is a rare commotion in the 

 ■coot world — callings and splashings, and runnings on the 

 top of the water, and chases and fights with beak and claw 

 after the manner of the waterhen, and rushings at each other 

 with arched backs and lowered heads, and divings and 

 flyings ; a " noisy lot of varmin " they are in the pairing 

 season, for they are ruder and more pugnacious than water- 

 hens, those sleek, greenish-black, fat, strong, unpoetic birds, 

 with their gleaming, heavy-looking head-plates and shining 

 feathers. If you do not see them fighting and going on, 

 you can hear them in the stuff", ere they come dashing 

 out, the two cocks, mayhap, after a hen, one finally succeed- 

 ing in driving her away and getting her to himself, whilst 

 the conquered one goes back into the reed to try again. 

 Towards the end of April they begin to pile up their swan- 

 like nests of dead gladen or reed, choosing a sere gladen or 

 reed-bed along the edge of the broad. The nest is a big 



one, and higher than the waterhen's, and seems to float on 



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