THE COOT 605 



"quee-oo" Occasionally one hears a variation not unlike the note of 

 a curlew. 



The familiar single note of the adult coot baffles description. My 

 note-books contain attempts such as khonf and qwonf but they fail 

 to recall the real sound. This appears to be subject to some varia- 

 tion in pitch, corresponding probably to different meanings, which 

 have yet to be closely studied. Among them may perhaps be classed 

 a sharp high pitched sound uttered in anger or defiance. The note 

 is ordinarily used as a call, both by day and also at night when the 

 bird is on the wing. A second well-marked note is a sharp clinking 

 sound, something like that made by striking two pebbles together, 

 and it is or may be accompanied by what sounds like an explosive 

 expulsion of breath a kind of phew! which has, however, to be 

 listened for. This note clearly expresses alarm, and serves as a 

 warning. A third note is one mentioned by Naumann, but to which 

 I can find no reference elsewhere. He states that it is difficult to 

 describe, and is uttered by the bird when holding the beak more or 

 less deep in the water indem sie den Schnabel dabei mehr oder weniger 

 tief ins Wasser halten. 1 Another sound which he describes as a dumpfes 

 Knappen, uttered in anger, probably corresponds to the snapping 

 of the mandibles, to which reference has already been made. This 

 account probably does not exhaust the vocabulary of the coot, which 

 happens to be one of the many British birds to whose notes very 

 little attention has been paid. 



The break up of the system of nesting-areas and the formation 

 of flocks begins in early autumn. The change from one to the other 

 has yet to be studied. It is probably a gradual process, and may be 

 aided by the absence of the proprietary sense in the young of the 

 year. In mid-July I have seen young of different families feeding 

 unconcernedly together while their parents still thought proper to 

 make hostile manifestations, in the approved style already described. 

 These seemed, however, to be more or less a matter of form. 



1 Vogel Mitteleuropas, vii. 131. 

 VOL. III. 4 I 



