COOT 281 



watercourses are frozen over in winter, it migrates to the tidal 

 estuaries and the sea-coast, wh&re it feeds on the mud-flats. The 

 nest is a large structure, placed among the reeds or rushes, and 

 built up to a height of several inches above the water. Seven to 

 ten eggs are laid, of a light stone-colour, speckled with dark brown. 

 The coot was formerly much more abundant than it is now in 

 England, and was, perhaps, most niimerous in the district of the 

 Broads in Norfolk. Sir Thomas Browne, writing of the birds of 

 Norfolk two centuries and a half ago, gives the following account of 

 a singular habit of this bird : ' Coots are in very great flocks on the 

 broad waters. Upon the appearance of a kite or buzzard I have 

 seen them unite from all parts of the shore in strange numbers ; 

 when, if the kite stoop near them, they will fling up and spread 

 such a flash of water with their wings that they will endanger the 

 kite, and so keep him off again and again in open opposition.' This 

 story, which reads like a fable, was foimd to be plain truth by Lord 

 Lilford, who observed the coots on the lakes of Epirus, a district 

 where birds of prey are abimdant. He writes : ' I have several 

 times observed the singular manner in which a flock of these birds 

 defend themselves against the white-tailed eagle. On the appear- 

 ance over them of one of these birds they collect in a dense body, 

 and when the eagle stoops at them they throw up a sheet of water 

 with their feet, and completely baffle their enemy ; in one instance 

 . . . they so drenched the eagle that it was with difficulty that he 

 reached a tree on the shore not more than a hundred yards from 

 the spot where he attacked them.' 



The order Alectorides, which follows, includes two noble forms 

 once coDomon, but now extinct in this country. One is the crane 

 {Grus communis), which was abundant in the fen country down to 

 the latter end of the seventeenth century. The other, finest of 

 British birds, is the great bustard (Otis tarda), which lived in 

 all suitable localities in England, from the southern counties to 

 Yorkshire, and was wantonly extirpated during the first half of the 

 present century. 



The little bustard {Otis tetrax) occurs as a rare straggler in the 

 eastern half of England. 



A single example of Macqueen's bustard {Otis macqueeni), an 

 Asiatic species, was obtained in England half a century ago. 



