Coot. 429 
such company. Their food consists in chief part of 
grasses and aquatic plants, with insects, worms, and 
slugs, when extending their researches to the land 
adjoining their watery home; they will also eat grain 
like the water-hen, though too shy to seek it in the 
same open and persistent manner. 
“A broad without coots,” writes Mr. Lubbock, 
“would be London without sparrows or Newcastle with- 
out coals,” and the number reared annually through- 
out that district amidst a wilderness of reeds and 
rushes, must be something enormous, although, as 
compared with former days, their diminution might 
be estimated almost by the acreage of fen-land now 
under cultivation. At Horsey, years ago, as Mr. Rising 
informs me, a fair held every spring in that locality 
was known as “coot custard fair” from the fact of 
all the sweets being then made with the eggs of 
these birds and of black-headed gulls. At Surlingham, 
by no means a large piece of water compared with 
Hickling, Horsey, or Ranworth, five or six hundred eggs 
have been taken in a season according to Mr. Lubbock, 
who, writing in 1845, speaks of their eggs being at 
that time much sought for, though ‘‘ formerly the birds 
were unmolested till the young could fly.” In autumn 
and winter they collect together on the open waters of 
the larger broads in immense flocks, their numbers greatly 
increased, at times, by migratory arrivals, and when thus 
collected together, large numbers have been killed at a 
shot, with big guns. A fen man at Hickling, on one 
occasion, in answer to Mr. Lubbock’s question as to the 
number of coots visible, estimated them at “about an 
acre and a half,”* which, as that gentleman remarks, “‘is 
* The author of “ British Field Sports” states that “he has 
actually beheld upon the Manningtree river, in Essex, a shoal of 
coots reaching two miles in length, as thick as they could well 
swim, and half a mile over.” 
