AZAe BIRDS OF NORFOLK. 
When compelled, however, from the necessities of 
hunger to quit the fresh waters for a time, the coots 
on any one broad migrate in a body, by night,* to 
the saltmarshes and flat oozy shores by the sea, and 
this so simultaneously that not a bird remains behind. 
There fresh persecution awaits them from the punt 
guns on Breydon and other parts of the coast; and 
in severe seasons their numbers are greatly thinned, 
some times twenty or more being killed at one shot. 
The “cripples,” as Mr. Frere tells me, that have 
escaped the gunners at the time are sure to be 
found secreted amongst the loose stones of the wall, 
which forms the boundary of those tidal waters, and a 
good retriever will thus pick up several in a morning, 
besides other fowl. He has also seen a coot, though 
quite dead, still clinging by its feet to the weeds under 
water, to which it had attached itself for the purpose 
of submersion and concealment. Many couples may be 
seen at such times for sale in our markets with other 
fowl, being offered at sixpence a piece, and when pro- 
perly cleansed from the thick black down under the 
feathers, are said to be very fair eating,t but except 
amongst the marshmen and labouring population of our 
Broad district, they seem but little appreciated. Most 
of the fenmen, according to Mr. Lubbock, prefer them 
to a wild fowl. The pace at which a winged coot will 
run, when once landed on the ooze, is almost incredible, 
* Captain Blakiston in a paper “on the Birds of the Interior 
of British North America” (“TIbis,” 1863, p. 135), states that the 
American coot (Fulica americana) “has a habit of making a sharp 
rattling noise at night; and, moreover, is said to migrate during 
darkness only.” 
+ Colonel Hawker, in his instructions for preparing coots for 
table, remarks particularly “that a coot shot in the morning, just 
after roosting, is worth three killed in the day when full of grass, 
because it will then be whiter and milder in flavour.” 
