out into the woods and cut down as large a dead one as he can handle, and set it 

 in the ground exactly where he wants it. A sapling will answer, but a larger tree 

 is more interesting. 



For the seed-eating birds it is well to have a variety of food. Mixed bird seed 

 is excellent for the smaller birds, but to it should be added such things as oats, 

 wheat, buckwheat, corn and sunflower seeds. If there are no cats in the neigh- 

 borhood, the best place to scatter the seed is on the ground, where seed-eating 

 birds usually get their food. First of all, however, the snow should be cleared 

 away ; otherwise the food is liable to sink in out of sight ; and besides, it is very 

 difficult for small birds to get about on foot in soft, deep snow. If there are cats 

 about, the food may be placed on shallow trays or tin pans, which may be set on 

 posts or fastened to the trunks and branches of trees. 



The American Coot 



By Thomas Nuttall 



The Coot of America, so very similar to that of Europe, according to the 

 season, is found in almost every part of the continent, from the grassy lakes 

 that skirt the Saskatchewan plains to the reedy lagoons of east Florida and 

 the marshes of Jamaica. Nocturnal in their habits, and dispersing themselves 

 far and wide over every watery solitude, they seem in many places to have 

 disappeared for the season, until the numbers, swelled by their prolific broods, 

 and impelled by the approach of winter to migrate for food, now begin to show 

 themselves in the lakes and pools, and estuaries in the vicinity of the sea. From 

 such situations they gradually recede toward the south, as the severity of the 

 season compels them, being unable to subsist amid the ice. 



In this way they proceed, accumulating in numbers as they advance, so that 

 in the inundated and marshy tracts of Florida, particularly along the banks of 

 the San Juan, they are seen in winter congregated in vast and noisy flocks. In 

 the milder latitudes their whole migration will be limited to a traverse from the 

 interior to the vicinity of the sea, while those which visit the wilderness of upper 

 Canada, where they are abundant in summer, will probably migrate from twenty- 

 five to thirty degrees every spring and autumn. 



The Coots arrive in Pennsylvania about the beginning of October. They 

 appear in fresh ponds, in the vicinity of Boston, about the first week in September. 

 One year a pair took up their residence in a small lake about the 15th of April, 

 and in June were occasionally seen accompanied by their young. 



Timorous and defenseless, they seek out the remotest solitudes at the nest- 

 ing season, where amid impassable bogs and pools, the few individuals which 

 dwell in the same vicinity are readily overlooked, and with difficulty discovered, 

 from the pertinacity of the older birds in hiding themselves wholly by day. It 

 is, therefore, only when the affections and necessities of the species increase that 

 they are urged to make more visible exertions, and throw aside for a time the 



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