100 )T. 



and is generally placed among and loosely attached to flags 

 and reeds; sometimes on a tuft of rushes, and composed of 

 the former plants: the finer portions are placed inwards. Mr. 

 Hewitson says that they are sometimes accumulated so much 

 as to rise from half d foot to a foot above the water, going 

 down also to a depth of from one foot and a half to 'two 

 feet; the width is about a foot and a half, and the interior 

 nearly flat, just sufficiently hollowed to retain the eggs. 

 Bewick mentions an instance where the nest of a Coot, 

 built among some rushes in a lake at Belsay, the seat of 

 Sir W. Middleton, in Northumberland, having been dislodged 

 by the wind and driven about, the hen bird still continued 

 to sit on the eggs, and hatched the young as if nothing had 

 happened. Such instances occasionally occur, the nest being 

 either built on a floating mass of sedge or rushes, or com- 

 posed itself of moveable materials. 



Since writing the above, I have observed one placed on 

 the water, as indeed they not unfrequently are, and confined 

 only in its place by the reeds springing up around . it. It 

 was only three or four yards from the edge of a small pond, 

 adjoining the high-road between High Catton and Stamford 

 Bridge. The old bird moved a little way from it as I 

 stopped, but did not appear shy, as she doubtless would at 

 another time. 



Bishop Stanley writes thus on the subject of this part of 

 the natural history of these birds: 'They, too, build a simple 

 rushy nest, but with this difference, that instead of seeking 

 to raise it above the water, they seem to prefer it floating 

 upon the very surface, where, of course, it is exposed to the 

 double danger of being carried hither and thither according 

 as the wind blows; or if interwoven with reeds or rushes 

 close to the water, of being covered, should the waters be 

 raised by floods. But the Coot is probably aware of these 

 possibilities, and accordingly guards against them, preventing 

 the nests being carried away, by ingeniously fastening the 

 materials of which they are made, to the rushes or osiers 

 near them, but at the same time these fastenings are of such 

 a nature as to allow of the nests rising with the water, so 

 that no ordinary flood would expose them to the danger of 

 immersion. The Coot, like the Water-Hen , covers her nest, 

 and, if not so effectually, yet with a most extraordinary 

 rapidity. We have repeatedly watched a Coot quietly sitting 

 on her nest; if the boat approaches, she rises, and immedi- 



