April 2, 1910.] 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
533 
The Mudhen’s Nest. 
To the gunner the mudhen, or American coot, 
is a bird of little or no standing. Its flesh is 
not good to eat, except in case of necessity, and 
then only when put through some specially de¬ 
vised process of cooking. Perhaps no other bird 
is more the victim of the sportsman’s depreda¬ 
tions. When ducks are scarce it is sometimes 
called sport to take a shot at these white-billed 
water pedestrians; or it is thought interesting 
to sit on the shore of pond or lake and see whose 
gun will make the best pattern on the water 
around them. Such thoughtless sacrifice of life 
is perpetrated mostly by young sportsmen, yet it 
is surprising how long many of the fraternity 
remain young. 
1 am sure there is no better antidote for such 
thoughtlessness than a study of these birds in 
their nesting season. Indeed, 
the knowledge of any bird’s 
nesting habits reduces one’s 
desire to take its life, except 
for good and sufficient rea¬ 
sons. Could every sports¬ 
man be a thorough naturalist 
there would scarcely be need 
of laws to protect our game 
birds. 
On the first* day of June 
I went with a friend to a 
rush-grown slough for the 
study of these nests. The 
slough was long and nar¬ 
row, with only a few places 
of open water along the cen¬ 
ter. A few blue-winged teal, 
mostly males, were flying 
about, and a spoonbill drake 
was conspicuous in the open 
water by his large areas of 
showy white feathers. But 
only one coot was in sight in 
the open water. 
We had never seen a coot’s 
nest and scarcely knew where 
to look for them, but felt 
sure that such a thorough 
water bird would build some¬ 
where among the rushes. There had been much 
rain and the water in the slough was high. Put¬ 
ting on our waders we walked into the water 
Until it came to our knees, and then began the 
circuit of the slough. The river rushes reached 
to our waist, and the bullrushes were still higher. 
We had not waded long before we came upon a 
muskrat sitting upon a slight platform of float¬ 
ing rushes eating the pith out of a river rush. 
He did not seem to mind us, but kept eating 
away quite undisturbed until we were within ten 
or twelve feet, when he suddenly dove and dis¬ 
appeared. There were many of these muskrat 
tables among the rushes. 
We noticed also that not a few of the black¬ 
birds’ nests, which were numerous, had been pil¬ 
laged. One had the lining completely torn out, 
so that it hung down on the outside of the nest, 
though it still inclosed the eggs. Several were 
bent down on one side and their rims indented 
as though strong claws had pulled them down. 
Do muskrats eat birds’ eggs? 
We had not been wading long before we came 
upon a large floating nest containing eleven long 
pointed and finely speckled eggs. The eggs were 
warm. The mother bird had heard 11s approach¬ 
ing and had slipped into the water and made off 
among the rushes. A few black feathers in¬ 
dicated the nest of the coot and a subsequent 
identification of the egg left no doubt. 
The nest was made wholly of dried rushes, 
both the round bullrush and the triangular river 
rush. These were piled into a round heap about 
eighteen inches in diameter and eight inches 
high, with the well formed nest from two to 
three inches deep in the center. The mass floated 
upon the water within a circle of growing rushes. 
It was not in any way attached to the rushes, 
but was free to rise or fall with the rising or 
falling water, and yet it could not float out of 
its position, as the ends of the rushes of which 
it was made extended like the spokes of a wheel 
in all directions with the growing rushes be¬ 
tween them. The nest was lined simply with 
NEST AND EGGS OF MUDHEN OR AMERICAN COOT. 
the small and limber parts of the rushes, and 
on one side the stiff parts of the rushes of which 
the nest mass was formed extended out beyond 
the circle and down into the water as though 
forming a gang plank up which the bird walked. 
As we afterward learned, this was not always true. 
While the eggs lay on dry rushes in the bot¬ 
tom of the nest proper, this dry layer was in 
dangerous proximity to the damp material just 
below it, and it was difficult to understand how 
the eggs could fail to be influenced by the moist¬ 
ure, but no doubt a certain degree of dampness 
is just as necessary to a coot’s eggs as is water 
to a coot. 
By the time we had thoroughly explored the 
slough eight of these nests were discovered. 
They were all made in the same way and were 
found in water about knee deep. Usually the 
eggs were found Warm. In one case I heard the 
bird as it slipped off the nest into the water and 
madq off among the rushes. The only case where 
the eggs were not found warm was a nest in 
which, upon a second visit, an additional egg was 
found upon the others. This bird had not yet 
begun to brood her eggs. 
Although we saw only one coot, there must 
have been in the neighborhood of tw r enty in this 
slough, but in nesting time they evidently keep 
hidden among the rushes. 
Two weeks later we visited these nests again. 
The rushes were grown so high, however, that 
we could find only five of them. Meanwhile 
there had been much rain and the water was 
eight or ten inches higher than on our first visit. 
We found one of the five nests hatched out and 
the young gone, though the nest itself had risen 
with the water. Two of the nests had not risen 
sufficiently, the water having reached the eggs, 
and these nests were abandoned. The failure of 
these nests to float seemed to be due, in one case, 
to the fact that the nest mass was not thick 
enough in depth to buoy it out of water suffi¬ 
ciently when by the heavy rains it became water¬ 
logged, and in the other to the fact that the 
mass became caught among 
the growing rushes and was 
held down. The other two 
nests, which still held their 
eggs, rose with the rising 
water and were as high alnd 
dry as when we first found 
them. Craig S. Thoms. 
Mammals Here and 
There. 
Thf. American bears have 
been a puzzle to students of 
mammals for lo thes.e many 
years, and these students 
must look back with sad re¬ 
gretful eyes to the days 
when it was believed that 
there were only four differ¬ 
ent sorts of bears in North 
America. One hesitates to 
say how many species, sub¬ 
species, varieties and geo¬ 
graphical races of American 
bears have sprung up within 
the last twenty years, and of 
these were many like those 
plants that took root on 
stony ground, and because 
they had no roots speedily withered away. One 
of the last of these is the black bear of Labra¬ 
dor concerning which Dr. J. A. Allen writes in the 
first article of the Bulletin of Natural History 
for the year 1910. It was described in 1898 by 
Mr. Outram Bangs as Ursus americanus sorn- 
borgeri, but further investigations on more com¬ 
plete material make it clear to Dr. Allen that 
the black bear of Labrador is not distinctively 
different from the black bears of other parts of 
the country. Arizona, Oregon, Minnesota and 
the Eastern United States furnish skulls which 
cannot be distinguished from those of Labrador. 
Mr. Bangs recognizes this and so stated in his 
recently published “Mammals of Labrador.” 
Dr. Allen on a series of six skulls, four males 
and two females from the Kenai Peninsula, 
Alaska, has described a race of black bears 
Ursus americanus kenaiensis. 
In the second article in the same bulletin Dr. 
Allen gives a list of twenty-five species of mam¬ 
mals brought from the Athabaska-Mackenzie re¬ 
gion of Canada by Edw. A. Preble, of the Bio¬ 
logical Survey, when he went with E. Thomp¬ 
son Seton to the Barren Grounds in the vicinity 
