Feb. iS, 1911.] 
253 
FOREST AND STREAM. 
tion was brought up each time. In this particular 
place the principal food seemed to be one or 
more species of Potamogeton, P. pectinatus prob¬ 
ably predominating. They often came up with 
the long stems hanging over their backs. Quite 
often the plant brought up looks like Qhara, 
but of this I could not be sure. 
It is quite certain the plants they were get¬ 
ting here were not their favorite food, but such 
as they could utilize when necessary. 
Depth. —Soundings taken in this pool show 
that the depth was nine to twelve feet. This 
open poo] was not in the part of the lake which 
one would expect to remain open longest, and 
Mr. Clark suggests that the coots and ducks 
determine the location of the open pools. As 
the ice-sheet spreads out more and more from 
shore, it travels very rapidly, once the water 
has become thoroughly chilled and the air is 
cold and still. A number of birds feeding in 
any particular place, or merely resting on the 
water, would keep the water more or less dis¬ 
turbed, and the heat of their bodies would cer¬ 
tainly raise the temperature of the water 
slightly, at least, and freezing at this place 
would be prevented. As the rest of the lake 
closed up, more fowls would come to this open 
place, and its freezing would be still longer 
delayed. 
I his theory seems entirely reasonable to me. 
Mr. Clark visited this open pool late at night, 
remaining until after 10 o’clock, to see how the 
birds behaved then. He found the open place 
literally packed full of birds, and a great many 
more sitting on the ice near the pool. 
Mr. Clark reports seeing no coots after Jan. 
10. and no ducks after Feb. 7. 
The Coot as an Article of Food. —I have been 
very much interested in the coot as an article 
of food. The opinion of those who have put 
themselves on record in the books is almost 
unanimous that the coot is worthless as food. 
An inquiry among my ornithological friends 
m V ashington resulted in my finding only two 
or three who had ever tasted coot. The ma¬ 
jority of them seemed to regard eating coot 
very much as we regard eating crow—a thing 
not to be thought of! 
But my friends, Dr. Fisher and William 
Palmer, admit that they have eaten coot and 
like it. They even say they regard coot as 
not at all inferior to the famous canvasback 
duck, and in this I agree with them fully. Coot, 
particularly young ones, skinned and fried, or 
even old ones parboiled, then baked, are quite 
as delicious as any duck I ever ate. 
It is, however, doubtless true that the deli¬ 
cacy of flavor, not only of the coot, but also of 
the canvasback and all other ducks, is largely 
determined by the kinds of food they get. The 
wild celery (Vallisneria spiralis ) is sufficently 
abundant in Lake Maxinkuckee to give to the 
coot frequenting that lake a delicate flavor 
which has received high praise from all who are 
familiar with it. 
. - llm tnmg up, then, my observations concern¬ 
ing the coot as seen at Lake Maxinkuckee, I 
would say that 
1- It is quite as aquatic in its habits a s anv 
duck. 
2- It is a splendid diver, and dives regularly 
and habitually when feeding. 
3 - It feeds preferably upon the winter stolons 
ot the wild celery, but later upon other parts 
of that plant and upon various species of 
Potamogeton, for which it dives as deep as 
twenty-five feet. 
4 - As an article of food, the coot is superior 
to most species of ducks. 
5 - When feeding it is not the taciturn bird 
Nuttall would have us believe, but a very so- 
ciable, loquacious bird, constantly talking to 
its associates day and night. 
6. It is nocturnal in its habits to some ex¬ 
tent, but perhaps not any more so than the 
mallard, the bluebill and some other ducks. 
Barton Warren Evf.rmann. 
The Wandering Woodcock. 
In the State of Washington? 
Kettle Falls, Wash., Feb. 5 .-Editor Forest 
and Stream: The editorial comment in the Natu¬ 
ral History department of Forest and Stream 
of the 21st of the present January, concerning 
the westernmost point of the woodcock’s range, 
was a great surprise to me. 
I moved to the Territory of Washington in 
the autumn of 1881, and on the first journey by 
wagon, when with my wife and family I was in 
search of a suitable place for the making of a 
home, we camped for noon near the State line 
of Washington, south of Walla Walla, and while 
the children gathered fuel for a camp-fire, I took 
my shotgun and started in search of something 
for dinner which might tempt the appetite of 
the ailing wife and mother. 
Strolling along up the little stream on the bank 
of which we had camped, when but a short dis¬ 
tance away from the wagon, I was overjoyed to 
find and kill two beautiful fat woodcock, which 
were seeking their own dinner in a swampy 
spring hole near the creek. 
Hurrying back to camp I dressed and broiled 
them over the coals, and the only hindrance to 
the perfection of that October camp-fire dinner 
was the refusal of the invalid to appropriate 
them both. 
That dinner has been recalled to memory 
scores of times since, both of us always insist¬ 
ing that the most delicious meat we had ever 
tasted was that of the fat woodcock broiled over 
the coals for that wayside meal. I happen to 
know what a woodcock is, too; not a rail, snipe, 
plover, dove, pigeon or sandhill crane. These 
were the first woodcock we found west of the 
Rockies. 
In May, 1884, we made our home in the valley 
of the Colville River, and for seventeen years 
lived near the site of the present town of Valley, 
on the line of the Spokane and Northern R. R.’ 
As the years passed, while most of my hunting 
was with the rifle for large game, once in a 
while the old shotgun accounted for a stray 
woodcock. They are not at ail plentiful here. 
Often years passed without a glimpse of one. 
One summer day some twenty years ago the 
children of George E. Wright, who lived three 
miles north of Valley, found the nest of a wood¬ 
cock in a thicket of willows in a swampy piece 
of ground near their home, and I went with 
Mr. Wright to the spot, flushed the woodcock 
from her nest and examined her clutch of eggs. 
Everything was precisely as the children had 
claimed. 
In my early hunting days in Washington I 
sent an occasional ornithological specimen to a 
taxidermist in Nebraska, and had I known that 
there was any doubt concerning the occurrence 
of woodcock west of the Rockies, be assured 
the editor of Forest and Stream would have 
had a Pacific coast specimen years ago. 
I have been away from the old “stampin’ 
ground ’. for ten years, and the country is con¬ 
tinually changing with the advance of civiliza¬ 
tion, yet I believe that were I again living on 
the old grounds where every foot of the land 
is familiar to me, before the coming summer 
has passed I could prove to the satisfaction of 
the experts that there are genuine wild wood¬ 
cock living in the State of Washington. 
Orin Belknap. 
In California? 
Pasadena, Cal., Feb. 4.— Editor Forest and 
Stream: You can safely set the line down 
marking the western limit of the woodcock as 
on or at least quite near the shores of the Pacific 
ocean. 
The last part of the past month of August 
Ernest Ekdale, of this city, saw a woodcock on 
the Shadynook Gun Club grounds, which are 
situated some sixteen miles south from Los 
Angeles, and about si^miles from the sea coast. 
Mr. Ekdale is a good naturalist and thoroughly 
familiar with all of our game birds. He was 
born and reared in the Middle West near good 
woodcock grounds, where he shot for the market 
before he came to Southern California. He first 
flushed this bird, and then saw it on the ground 
and could not be mistaken in its identity. 
The common blue-wing teal has been shot here 
this season, though not in large numbers. 
N. P. Leach, 
Zoological Society Bulletin. 
The January issue of the Zoological Society 
Bulletin contains a number of illustrations of 
the new administration building in the Zoological 
Park, New York city. This building, which is 
for the use of members and officials of the so¬ 
ciety, will contain the library, and now houses 
the national collection of heads and horns, of 
which so much has been said. 
The same number of the Bulletin contains an 
interesting article, very fully illustrated, by Paul 
J. Rainey, describing the capture of the large 
white bear brought back by the Rainey expedi¬ 
tion and presented to the Zoological Society. It 
also contains a finely illustrated article on the 
crane collection of the Zoological Park, by Lee 
S. Crandall, acting curator of birds. 
More ^Canadian Reserves" and Parks. 
The good work of constantly setting aside 
more forest reserves and parks which was long 
ago inaugurated by the Canadian Government, 
still goes on. On Feb. 2 the Dominion Forest 
Reserves and Parks act passed to its third read¬ 
ing at Ottawa and will become law. 
The act sets aside as forest and park reserves 
18,604 square miles in Alberta, 923 in Saskatche¬ 
wan, 2,114 in British Columbia and 3,854 in 
Manitoba. A total of 25,225 square miles will 
thus be added to Canada’s already splendid list 
of reservations, and this great area cannot be 
sold or settled on except by an Order in Council. 
