258 
ORDERS OF BIRDS— CRANES, RAILS, AND COOTS 
peacock blue on the back and lower breast. 
Even as it rises beside your railway train you 
can easily recognize it before it is lost to view. 
It still breeds on the head waters of the St. 
Johns, opposite Melbourne. 
The Coot, or Mud-Hen , 1 is a bird of the 
small creeks, and the shores of shallow lakes 
and ponds where cat-tails, lizard-tails, iris and 
rushes grow abundantly. It is natural for any 
one who writes about a bird to think of it as he 
saw it most impressively. My memory goes 
back to my first days of alligator and crocodile 
hunting, in the little creeks that flow from the 
Florida Everglades into the head and western 
side of Biscayne Bay. Then and there, Mud- 
1 Fu-li'ca americana. Average length, 14.50 inches. 
Hens were so numerous and so tame they be- 
came positively monotonous. As we rowed 
silently along Snake Creek, or Arch Creek, the 
man in the bow ready for the next “big, old 
’gator” found sunning himself at the edge of 
the saw-grass, up would go three or four slaty- 
blue birds of the size of bantam hens. With 
feeble flight, and feet pattering on the water to 
help along, they would fly ahead of the boat 
in a most offensively ostentatious manner. 
Of course any old alligator knows that a scared 
Coot usually means a boat; and since every 
boat is known to be loaded, the natural sequence 
of a frightened Coot is the bottom of the creek. 
The foot of the Coot is very curiously formed. 
It looks as if originally it had been fully webbed, 
but some one in sportive mood took a pair of 
scissors, cut out the centre of the web, and cut 
deep scallops in the web along each side of each 
toe. The foot, therefore, is half webbed, — an 
excellent arrangement for running on water 
when the wings lend their assistance. This 
bird never rises on the wing without a prelim- 
inary run on the water of from fifty to one 
hundred and fifty feet. It swims and dives 
quite well, but as a rule it prefers to live as do 
the rails arid gallinules, in the edges of heavj’' 
marsh vegetation, where it can pick up its living 
of buds, blossoms, seeds, aquatic insects and 
snails, and also hide from its enemies. 
As yet the Coot is not considered a “game- 
bird,” and is not slaughtered for food ; but, once 
let the evil eye of the Epicure fall with favor 
upon this bird — or any other — and its doom will 
be sealed. 
The distribution of this species is given as 
“from Greenland and Alaska southward to the 
West Indies.” 
