THE COOT. 33 



white, which show when the bird jerks its tail as it comes 

 out into the open water. Dray ton, in his " Polyolbion," 

 notices this : 



" The coot bald, else clean black, that whitenesse it doth weare 

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

 Upon her little tayle, in one small feather set." 



Mr. Howard Saunders (" Yarrell," fourth edition, vol. iii.) 

 says that Dr. William Turner, writing in 1544, calls the 

 bird a Water-hen, or a Mot-hen, or it should be moat- 

 hen, as in the days of moated houses these birds 

 much frequented the moats. The term moor-hen probably 

 comes from moorish, a synonym for marshy. Spenser 

 says, " The moorish Cote and soft sliding Breame " (" Faery 

 Queene," B. iv.). The nest is a curious lump of reeds 

 and rushes, sometimes on a mass of flags in the water, 

 sometimes on a bough overhanging the water. Clare 

 says : 



" At distance from the water's edge, 



On hanging sallow's farthest stretch, 

 The moor-hen 'gins her nest of sedge, 

 Safe from destroying schoolboy's reach." 



Some people, particularly river-keepers, assert that the 

 moor-hen destroys the ova of trout. It may be so, to a 

 certain extent ; on the other hand, the bird compensates 

 for this by destroying in great quantities, the larvae of the 

 dragon-fly and the water-beetles, both great devourers of 

 the ova and fry of trout. 



THE COOT. 



The COOT, Fulica atra (" the dark sooty bird"), of the same 

 family as the moor-hen, is well known to all frequenters 

 of the water-side, as it is not only found in considerable 

 numbers on all our still waters, lakes, and broads, but it 

 frequents most of our slow-running chalk-streams and 



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