200 
WADING BIRDS. 
rapacious species. Indeed, it is only the second hatch, of 
about eight eggs, more securely concealed among the flags on 
the margins of pools, that ever survive to renew the species. 
The nest, secreted in this manner among the rank herbage, is 
placed on the surface of the water, but raised above it by piling 
together a quantity of coarse materials, in order to keep the 
eggs dry. In this buoyant state a sudden gale of wind has 
been known to draw them from their slender moorings, and 
nests have thus been seen floating on the water, with the birds 
still sitting upon them, as in the act of navigating over the pool 
on which they had resided. The female is said to sit twenty- 
two or twenty- three days; the young, now covered with a 
black down, quit the nest as soon as they are hatched, and are 
then cherished under the wings of the mother, and sleep around 
her beneath the reeds ; she also leads them to the water, in 
which they swim and dive from the moment of their liberation 
from the shell. 
When closely pursued in the water, the Coot sometimes 
makes for the shore, and from the compressed form of its body, 
though so awkward in its gait, can make considerable progress 
through the grass and reeds. When driven to take wing on 
the water, it rises low and with reluctance, fluttering along the 
surface with both the wings and feet pattering over it, for which 
reason, according to Lawson, in his “ History of Carolina,” they 
had in that country received the name of Flusterers. 
The food of the American Coot, like that of the other species, 
is chiefly vegetable ; it lives also upon small fluviatile shells 
and aquatic insects, to all which it adds gravel and sand, in 
the manner of common fowls. A specimen which I examined 
on the 19 th of September had the stomach, very capacious 
and muscular, filled with tops of the water milfoil {Myriophyl- 
lum verticillafum) , and a few seeds or nuts of a small species 
of bur-reed {Sparganium) . From the contents of the intes- 
tines, which were enormous, aquatic vegetables appeared now 
to be their principal food. 
In the month of November the Coot leaves the Northern 
and Middle States, and retires by night, according to its usual 
