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Sora — Part 4
Images coming soon.
A large amount of gravel seems necessary to help digest the quantity of grain swallowed, and for this a flock of coots must sometimes leave the muddy region of the lake. Rising from the surface, they flutter just above it, pattering along for a distance, their distended feet striking the water constantly, until sufficient momentum is gained to spring into the air and trust to wing power alone. This pattering noise and splashing, often heard when the coots cannot be seen for the tall sedges that screen them, is characteristic of several of the ducks also, and suggests the notion that the trick may have been learned from them; for in southern waters, at least, coots and ducks often resort to the same lakes;--that is, when the latter refuse to be driven off. At no time of the year silent birds, often incessant chatterers, it is during the nesting season that the coots break out into shrill, high-pitched, noisy cacklings, which the slightest disturbance calls forth. Jealous, unwilling to permit alien swimmers in their neighborhood, sociable, but without any great love of kin or kind to mellow their dispositions or their voices, they make their neighborhood lively. But coots are shy of men, albeit the young and old alike have flesh no one not starving could eat; and they usually live in some inaccessible pond or swamp, especially at the nesting season. As night approaches, they lose much of the timidity which keeps them concealed and silent the greater part of the day.
In May a nest has been built by first trampling down the rushes and weed stalks, then more of the same material is used for an exterior and finer grasses for a lining of the crib which toward the end of the month contains from eight to fifteen yellowish white eggs sprinkled over with brownish spots, chiefly around the larger end. Let no other bird dare show its head in the immediate neighborhood of a pair of nesting coots. They will tolerate no neighbors then, gregarious as they are at other seasons. After three weeks of close confinement the mother bird leads her large brood to water, where the chicks swim and dive almost from the beginning, although keeping close enough to their patient teacher to hide under her wings on the first shrill alarm cry from the father, ever on guard. Hawks from above and pickerel and turtles from below find no fault, as men do, with the flavor of young coots. But soon the fledgelings become quite independent, leaving the parents free to devote their attention to another brood. Usually the flock of migrating coots that we see in autumn is only a large family party.
SHORE BIRDS
Phalaropes
Avocets
Stilts
Snipe
Sandpipers
Plovers
Turnstone
Oyster Catcher
SHORE BIRDS
PHALAROPES, SNIPE, SANDPIPERS, PLOVERS, SURF BIRDS, ETC.
(Order Limicoloe)
Birds of the open field, marshy bogs and thickets, or shores close by the water's edge, finding their food on the surface of the ground, in the mud, or among the shallows of the beach, averaging smaller than birds of any other group included in this book, they usually have long slender legs for wading, and long slender bills for probing the mud after food, which increase their apparent size. Unlike the compressed figures of rails and their allies, the bodies of these birds are depressed or well rounded; their wings are long and pointed; their tails, which are short, are very full feathered. As compared with the large footed herons, rails, and gallinules, these birds have short, toes, the hinder one very short, elevated, or absent; but certain species find their toes long enough to tread out worms and small shell fish from the mud flats, and some, partly webbed, are well adapted for swimming. The nests of birds of this very large order are mere depressions in the ground, not always lined with grass, and their young, fully clothed with down when hatched, are able to run about immediately.
Phalaropes
(Family Phalaropodidoe)
A small, select family of three, two of whose species keep so far out at sea during their migrations from the Arctic regions to the south that we rarely see them, Wilson's phalarope, alone, being anywhere a common bird in the United States. Strangely enough, it is far more abundant in the interior than on the coast. The bodies of these small sea snipe, as they are often called, are depressed, covered with thick plumage to resist water that they spend much time upon, for their feet are furnished with narrow lobes that enable them to swim well. They are smaller than the robin. The curious characteristic of this family is that it contains the most advanced female among all the feathered tribes; this strong minded creature wearing the gay colors, doing the wooing, and gayly disporting herself, while the male incubates the eggs and attends to nursery drudgeries.