394 
ALECTORIDES. 
Hab. The whole of North America, Middle America, and West Indies; north to Greenland 
and Alaska, south to Veragua and Trinidad. 
Sp. Char. Adult : General color uniform slate-color or slaty plumbeous, the head and neck 
and anterior central portion of the crissum black ; lateral and posterior portions of the crissum, 
edge of wing, and tips of secondaries white. (In winter, the belly suffused with whitish.) Bill 
milk-white, more bluish terminally, each mandible with a spot of dark brown near the end, bor- 
dered anteriorly with a more or less distinct bar of reddish chestnut ; frontal shield dark chestnut- 
or liver-brown, the culmen just in front of this tinged with greenish yellow ; iris blight crimson ; 
legs bright yellowish green, the tibiae tinged behind and above with orange-red ; toes light bluish 
gray, tinged with yellowish green on scutellae of basal phalanges. 1 Young: Similar, but lower 
parts more gray, and much suffused with whitish, especially on the throat and belly ; bill dull 
flesh-color, tinged with olive-greenish, the frontal shield rudimentary ; iris brown. Downy young : 
Prevailing color blackish plumbeous ; head, neck, and upper parts relieved by numerous crisp, 
elongated, somewhat filamentous bristles, these sparse, light orange-buff and white, on the upper 
parts, but dense and deep salmon-orange on the head and neck, where the dark plumbeous down 
is almost or cpiite concealed ; these colored filaments entirely absent from the whole pileuin, which 
is mostly bald toward the occiput, elsewhere covered with closely appressed black bristles ; lores 
densely covered with short, stamen-like, orange-red papillae. Bill orange-red, the tip of the max- 
illa black ; feet dusky (in skin). 
Total length, about 14 inches ; wing, 7.25-7.60 ; culmen (to commencement of frontal shield), 
1.25-1.50 ; tarsus, 2.00-2.20 ; middle toe, 2.45-2.65. 
The Common Coot of the North American fauna has a very widely extended 
distribution, ft is found present and breeding in a large part of Northern South 
America, in Jamaica, Cuba, and other West India Islands, in many of the Southern 
States, in the Northwestern States, in the interior between the Missouri and the 
Western Mountains, on the Pacific coast, and on the Saskatchewan and the Mackenzie 
as far to the north as the 55th parallel, and even farther. It is not so common on 
the Atlantic coast, and is met with chiefly, or wholly, in its migrations — usually in 
September. It is very abundant in Mexico in the winter. Two instances are cited 
by Reinhardt of its having been taken in Greenland : one was in 1854, by Mr. Olric, 
the governor of North Greenland, in the harbor of Christianshaab ; the other in the 
same year, by Holbdll, at Godthaab. It is an occasional visitant of Bermuda. Rich- 
ardson, who met with it in the Fur Country, states that its habits exactly resemble 
those of the closely allied European Coot. The small grassy lakes which skirt the 
Saskatchewan Plains are much frequented by this species. It was not met with near 
1 Fresh colors of an adult male killed at Wheatland, Ind., April 15, 1881. 
