COOT 
257 
warm reddish-brown, and often with ashy grey. 
Smaller, flatter nests, built of the same dry materials, 
are often found among the reeds as the season goes 
on ; there are supplementary platforms or resting- 
places, built by the half-grown young of earlier 
broods, as well as by the cock. The still slighter 
platforms made of green reeds gnawed into lengths 
are the work of water-rats, not of Moorhens ; but 
sometimes an abandoned Moorhen's nest is used as 
the foundation for one of these water-rat's rest- 
ing-places and dining-tables. The name of Water- 
hen is much more descriptive of the habits of this 
species than the one more generally in use, since 
the Moorhen is by no means a bird of what we 
now know as the moors ; but in earlier times 
" moor " and " mere " were used in the same 
sense to describe waste and marshy ground, and 
*' Moorhen " is a legacy from that date. 
COOT. 
{Fulica atra.^ 
The Coot is a larger bird than the Moorhen, 
and is found only upon the larger lakes and pools, 
and broad, sluggish, lowland streams. Its plumage 
is almost completely black, and at a little distance 
no other colour can be seen, except the conspicuous 
