MR. J. H. GURNEY ON COOT SHOOTING ON IIICKLING BROAD. 271 
that Fenwick Hole says women were regularly employed at 
Aldeburgh in preparing them. 
Among the slain, I am sorry to say, there was a Great Crested 
Grebe, already assuming breeding plumage, and a Sclavonian Grebe, 
whose eye exhibited the usual red and golden circles. 
The opportunity of examining such a large series, though I did 
not inspect nearly all of them, led to the following conclusions : — 
Some Coots are much larger than others, blacker in plumage, have 
bigger shields and yellow garters, and more white on the wing. 
These giants are well known to the fenmen, and some of them, 
Mr. Bird finds, weigh one pound more than the small race, and he 
adds that there are always two sizes of Coot’s eggs to be found in 
summer, which Stevenson corroborates, the inference being that 
the big birds lay the big eggs. It was certainly excusable in the 
old naturalists to make two species of the Coot, but many other 
species, e.g., the Water Rail, Wheatear, Ringed Dotterel and 
Dunlin, vary quite as much in size, yet no lino can be drawn, which 
would sufficiently discriminate between the big and the small, and 
after all they do not differ more than human beings. 
The Coot’s beak and shield are generally described as pale 
flesh-colour, and in one plate the shield is bright red, but at this 
time of the year they are without exception of the purest ivory 
white, and the mouth and tongue also. Not one showed the 
slightest approach to knobs at the apex of the shield, which 
characterises the Crested Coot. "' 
The feet and scalloped toes of a Coot are not green but very 
dark gray, and legs, toes, and claws are so strong that they are able 
to hold on with great tenacity,! so much so that a wounded Coot 
clutched at and then clung on to my man’s trousers as if it would 
have torn them. I can testify to the agility with which some of 
the wounded ones dived, and so mysteriously do they sometimes 
disappear that one cannot but believe the common story of their 
clinging to weeds under the water, and preferring to die there. 
* Another allied species, and one perhaps more likely to be detected in 
England, is Fulica am erica in, distinguishable by its white lateral tail- 
coverts. 
t On one occasion a Coot was discovered either entangled or clinging 
by its legs to the signal cord of a railway carriage at Thorpe Station 
(Zool. 1885, p. 56). 
