200 WADING BIRDS. 



rapacious species. Indeed, it is only the second hatch, of 

 about eight eggs, more securely concealed among the flags on 

 the margins of pools, that ever survive to renew the species. 

 The nest, secreted in this manner among the rank herbage, is 

 placed on the surface of the water, but raised above it by piling 

 together a quantity of coarse materials, in order to keep the 

 eggs dry. In this buoyant state a sudden gale of wind has 

 been known to draw them from their slender moorings, and 

 nests have thus been seen floating on the water, with the birds 

 still sitting upon them, as in the act of navigating over the pool 

 on which they had resided. The female is said to sit twenty- 

 two or twenty-three days ; the young, now covered with a 

 black down, quit the nest as soon as they are hatched, and are 

 then cherished under the wings of the mother, and sleep around 

 her beneath the reeds ; she also leads them to the water, in 

 which they swim and dive from the moment of their liberation 

 from the shell. 



When closely pursued in the water, the Coot sometimes 

 makes for the shore, and from the compressed form of its body^ 

 though so awkward in its gait, can make considerable progress 

 through the grass and reeds. When driven to take wing on 

 the water, it rises low and with reluctance, fluttering along the 

 surface with both the wings and feet pattering over it, for which 

 reason, according to Lawson, in his " History of Carolina," they 

 had in that country received the name of Fbisterers. 



The food of the American Coot, like that of the other species, 

 is chiefly vegetable ; it lives also upon small fluviatile shells 

 and aquatic insects, to all which it adds gravel and sand, in 

 the manner of common fowls. A specimen which I examined 

 on the 19th of September had the stomach, very capacious 

 and muscular, filled with tops of the water milfoil iyMyriophyl- 

 liim verticillatum) , and a few seeds or nuts of a small species 

 of bur-reed {Sparganium) . From the contents of the intes- 

 tines, which were enormous, aquatic vegetables appeared now 

 to be their principal food. 



In the month of November the Coot leaves the Northern 

 and Middle States, and retires by night, according to its usual 



