THE AMERICAN COOT. 457 
safe distance. To-day, however, under the lash of incessant alarms they took 
to wing readily and proved themselves graceful fliers—a little slow and very 
steady, but really fair game so far as that is concerned. In flight, they carry 
their legs stretched at full length behind them, and seem to use them quite 
cleverly as a rudder, to supply the deficiencies of the abbreviated tail. 
Every gun in the swamp was pounding at them, but they had no thought 
of leaving the locality by daylight. A sad feature of the chase was the number 
of birds that fell into the reeds and were either lost, if dead, or else left wound- 
ed. So fierce 
was the per- 
secution. 
that by noon 
there were 
only eighty 
that mus- 
tered in the 
open water 
while the 
sportsmen 
lunched; al- 
tho I pre- 
sume there 
were as 
many more 
lurking in 
Plmemeneeds: 
Those which 
were spared 
Taken in Lorain County : Photo by the Author. 
the first day COOT AT BAY. 
THIS BIRD WAS FOUND SPENDING THE DAY ON A TINY STREAM FOUR MILES 
FROM LAKE ERIE. 
were too 
Enred Lie 
move south on the following night, and a remnant of a hundred and fifty birds 
were found on the same spot early the next morning, when the process of half- 
killing was substantially repeated. 
Query: If it takes Coots ten nights, with daily rests (?) between, 
to pass from their northern breeding grounds to their winter quarters, and 
a flock, faring as this one did, averages to lose half its number each day, of 
512 birds that leave Canada, how many will reach Florida? 
Query number two: Does it pay? Well, here is something to guage by: 
I would have given ten dollars for a photograph of the flock as I saw it first. 
but I would not give half that sum for all their carcasses piled in a heap. What 
sort of folly is this thing we call sport? 
