26 BIRDS OF THE DISTRICT OF GEELONG 
identify the Waterhen even at a little distance. 
Moreover, it swims readily and habitually, while I 
do not think I ever saw a Bald Coot swimming. The 
Waterhen's plumage is chiefly dull greyish black, the 
frontal plate orange-coloured. It has a loud, staccato, 
yet not altogether unmusical call. 
Its favourite abode is in reed-beds which grow 
along the banks of our slow-flowing rivers and creeks ; 
for breeding in, it must have a patch of the sort of 
bulrushes called typha, so frequently found in the 
deep pools, marking perhaps the old course of the 
river, which lie parallel with the Barwon about Ceres. 
These rushes are the sort of which the brown velvety 
heads are sometimes used for decorative purposes. 
The reason the Waterhen prefer them to the taller 
and stiffer feather-topped or pipe reeds (Calamus) 
is that they are so much easier to break down when 
a nest foundation is needed. The broad leaves, too, 
bitten into suitable lengths, dry into a comfortable 
resting-place for the sitting bird and her clutch of 
eight or nine eggs. 
When I first saw Waterhen I mistook them for 
Australian Coot {Fulica). They were swimming 
about alongside a patch of bulrushes on Bream Creek. 
It is one of the most secluded stretches of water that 
I know — a deep, unruffled, scarce-moving stream 
shadowed with the rounded outlines of ancient ti- 
trees which overhang it, with here and there a manna- 
gum or a prickly bursaria. Revisiting the spot in 
the spring, I discovered, in the first clump of rushes 
