210 COOT. 



bushes or hedge-rows, and resorts to rivers and running streams, 

 where many are killed. A few years since, a Moor-hen built its 

 nest in the bough of a willow tree overhanging the pond at 

 Vennwood, at a height of twelve or fourteen feet from the surface 

 of the water. 



Genus— FULICA. 

 FULICA ATRA— Coot. 



The Coot, bald, else clean black, that whitenesse it doth beare, 

 Upon the forehead starr'd, the Water-hen doth wear 

 Upon her little tayle, in one small feather set. 



Drayton— Po?yoZ6ioM, 25th Song. 



The Bald-Coot visits all the larger ponds and ornamental 

 pieces of water throughout the county, but it is not very 

 abundant. In some ponds, as at the Mynde, Berrington, and 

 Shobdon, they are allowed to breed ; and in a few others they do so 

 in spite of the keepers, where the aquatic vegetation is sufficiently 

 dense to afford them protection. 



Coots feed on aquatic insects, worms, slugs, and water-plants ; 

 if other food is scarce, they feed readily on grass ; grain they 

 devour with eagerness, picking it up even quicker than our domestic 

 poultry. They move as easily on the land as on the water, and 

 though they prefer to roost among the tall rushes in the midst of a 

 piece of water, they will ascend a tree if other covert fails them. 



The nests of the Coot are very large, and amazingly strong and 

 compact. — Hewitson says, " they are sometimes built on a tuft of 

 rushes, but more commonly among reeds ; they are supported by 

 those that lie prostrate on the water, whilst others have their 

 foundations at its bottom, and are raised till they become from six 

 to twelve inches above the surface, sometimes in a depth of one 

 and a half or two feet. They are composed of flags and broken 

 reeds, finer towards the inside, and contain from seven to ten eggs." 

 Bishop Stanley says that the Coot sometimes seems to prefer a 



