BALD COOT 
29 
poor birds, which, doing no harm, are beautiful in 
the freedom of the marsh and (to make a more likely 
appeal) very little good to eat. 
Plentiful as Bald Coots still are about the Conne- 
warre Lakes, I know no other part of this district 
where they are to be found. There were numbers 
at Airey's Inlet twenty years ago, but the draining 
of Lugg's Swamp deprived them of their breeding- 
place, and all left. During minor floods they are to 
be seen all over the lignum scrubs along the Barwon 
below the Willows, perched on the bushes or walking 
about the mud flats with a curiously preoccupied air 
and inconsequential flickings of the tail. 
Like the Moorhen, the Bald Coot spends most of 
its time in the tall feather-topped reeds, but it does 
not breed there. At nesting-time, early in October, 
the Bald Coots repair to a kind of rushy sedge about 
3 feet high, which is found at infrequent intervals 
along the banks of secluded arms of Connewarre. 
While examining such a spot in November, 191 1, we 
found several large platforms built of piled-up wet 
rushes and the like, just within the sedge at the end 
of the waterway. Stray feathers of the Bald Coot 
suggested the builders, but from their exposed posi- 
tion and general wetness it seemed obvious they 
were not meant as nests, rather probably feeding 
or observation stations. 
The real nests we discovered 50 yards and more 
away ; much neater structures these, composed of 
stalks of the sedge itself, heaped up to about 18 inches 
