20 Bird Day Book 



MARBLED GODWIT 



T 



HE coot is a most remarkable bird, at home equally in the 

 of shore birds, the present species measuring about eighteen 

 inches in length, including the long up-curved bill. They 

 breed in the interior from Saskatchewan south to North 

 Dakota and winter from the Gulf coast and Lower California south- 

 ward. They only casually occur on either the Atlantic or Pacific 

 coasts during migration. Their three or four creamy-buff eggs, 

 spotted with yellowish-brown, are laid in scantily lined depressions 

 on the ground in the vicinity of water; as usual with birds of this 

 order, the eggs are pear-shaped and very large compared with the 

 body of the bird. 



They are highly prized for the table and eagerly hunted when- 

 ever they appear on the marshes ; ordinarily, they are rather shy, 

 but since they come to imitations of their calls and to decoys stuck 

 up in the mud, their shyness does not avail them. They are com- 

 monly known as brown marlins or spike-bills. 



— Game Birds. 



m 



COOT 



-♦©♦ 



THE cot is a most remarkable bird, at home equally in the 

 water or on land in marshes. Plumage gray like that of 

 the Florida Gallinude, but secondaries tipped with white, 

 bill white with a black band or spots in the middle, practi- 

 cally no frontal plate, and the toes each with a lobed web. Coots 

 swim and dive fully as well as any of our ducks, and are frequently 

 seen on bays and in rivers in company with them, or in flocks of their 

 own kind. While swimming they have a habit of nodding the head 

 in time to the strokes of their feet. They are to be found through- 

 out the United States and southern Canada. 



— Game Birds. 



