AMERICAN COOT. 
199 
unknown. Timorous and defenceless, they seek out the re- 
motest solitudes to breed, where, amidst impassable bogs and 
pools, the few individuals which dwell in the same vicinity are 
readily overlooked and with difficulty discovered, from the 
pertinacity of the older birds in hiding themselves wholly by 
day. It is therefore only when the affections and necessities 
of the species increase that they are urged to make more visi- 
ble exertions, and throw aside, for a time, the characteristic 
indolence of their furtive nature. We now see them abroad, 
accompanied by their more active and incautious offspring, 
night and morning, without exhibiting much timidity, the young 
sporting and feeding with careless confidence in their fickle 
element. They are at this time easily approached and shot, 
as they do not appear to dive with the same promptness as the 
European species. 
The old birds, ever watchful and solicitous for their brood, 
with which they still appear to associate, when alarmed utter 
at times a sort of hoarse 'kruk, which serves as a signal either 
to dive or swim away. At this season of the year Mr. N. 
Wyeth informs me that he has heard the Coot repeatedly 
utter a whizzing sound, which he can only compare to the 
plunge of large shot when fired into water. It might possibly 
be the small and bouncing leaps with which the associated 
young of the common species amuse themselves at almost all 
hours of the day. In East Florida, where they appear, ac- 
cording to Bartram, to assemble and breed in great numbers, 
they are very chattering and noisy, and may be heard calling 
on each other almost night and day. With us they are, how- 
ever, very taciturn, though tame, and with many other birds 
appear to have no voice but for the exciting period of the 
nuptial season. 
The Coots of Europe have many enemies in the predacious 
birds which surround them, particularly the Moor Buzzard^ 
which not only destroys the young, but sucks the eggs to such 
an extent that notwithstanding their great prolificacy, they lay- 
ing from twelve to eighteen eggs, the numbers are so thinned 
by depredation that not above one tenth escape the talons of 
