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. Eising 

 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 Manuingtree river, in Essex, a shoal of 

 coots reaching two miles in length, as thick as they could well 

 swim, and half a mile over." 



