One day in August 1899, I witnessed a pretty little bird-comedy at the Pen Ponds, in Richmond Park, which seemed to throw a strong light on the inner or domestic life of the coot. For a space of twenty minutes I watched an old coot industriously diving and bringing up the white parts of the stems of Polygonum persicaria, which grows abundantly there, together with the rarer more beautiful Lymnanthemum nymphoïdes, which is called Lymnanth for short. I prefer an English name for a British plant, an exceedingly attractive one in this case, and so beg leave to call it Water-crocus. The old bird was attended by a full-grown young one, which she was feeding, and the unfailing diligence and quickness of the parent were as wonderful to see as the gluttonous disposition of its offspring. The old coot dived at least three times every minute, and each time came up with a clean white stem, the thickness of a stout clay pipe-stem, cut the proper length—about three to four inches. This the young bird would take and instantly swallow; but before it was well down his throat the old bird would be gone for another. I was with a friend, and we wondered when its devouring cormorant appetite would be appeased, and how its maw could contain so much food; we also compared it to a hungry Italian greedily sucking down macaroni.
While this was going on a second young bird had been on the old nest on the little island in the lake, quietly dozing; and at length this one got off his dozing-place, and swam out to where the weed-fishing and feeding were in progress. As he came up, the old coot rose with a white stem in her beak, which the new-comer pushed forward to take; but the other thrust himself before him, and, snatching the stem from his parent's beak, swallowed it himself. The old coot remained perfectly motionless for a space of about four seconds, looking fixedly at the greedy one who had been gorging for twenty minutes yet refused to give place to the other. Then very suddenly, and with incredible fury, she dashed at and began hunting him over the pond. In vain he rose up and flew over the water, beating the surface with his feet, uttering cries of terror; in vain he dived; again and again she overtook and dealt him the most savage blows with her sharp beak, until, her anger thoroughly appeased and the punishment completed, she swam back to the second bird, waiting quietly at the same spot for her return, and began once more diving for white stems of the Polygonum.
Never again, we said, would the greedy young bird behave in the unmannerly way which had brought so terrible a castigation upon him! The coot is certainly a good mother who does not spoil her child by sparing the rod. And this is the bird which our comparative anatomists, after pulling it to pieces, tell us is a small-brained, unintelligent creature; and which old Michael Drayton, who, being a poet, ought to have known better, described as "a formal brainless ass"!
Happy families
To come back to the Itchen birds. The little group, or happy family, I have described was but one of the many groups of the same kind existing all along the river; and these separate groups, though at a distance from each other, and not exactly on visiting terms, each being jealous of its own stretch of water, yet kept up a sort of neighbourly intercourse in their own way. Single cries were heard at all times from different points; but once or two or three times in the day a cry of a coot or a moor-hen would be responded to by a bird at a distance; then another would take it up at a more distant point, and another still, until cries answering cries would be heard all along the stream. At such times the voice of the skulking water-rail would be audible too, but whether this excessively secretive bird had any social relations with the others beyond joining in the general greeting and outcry I could not discover. Thus, all these separate little groups, composed of three different species, were like the members of one tribe or people broken up into families; and altogether it seemed that their lines had fallen to them in pleasant places, although it cannot be said that the placid current of their existence was never troubled.
I know not what happened to disturb them, but sometimes all at once cries were heard which were unmistakably emitted in anger, and sounds of splashing and struggling among the sedges and bulrushes; and the rushes would be swayed about this way and that, and birds would appear in hot pursuit of one another over the water; and then, just when one was in the midst of wondering what all this fury in their cooty breasts could be about, lo! it would all be over, and the little grebe would be busy catching his silvery fishes; and the moor-hen, pleased as ever at her own prettiness, nodding and prinking and flirting her feathers; and the coot, as usual, mermaid-like, combing out her slate-coloured tresses.
We have seen that of these three species the little grebe was not so happy as the others, owing to his taste for little fishes being offensive to the fish-breeder and preserver. When I first saw how this river was watched over by the water-keepers, I came to the conclusion that very few or no dabchicks would succeed in hatching any young. And none were hatched until August, and then to my surprise I heard at one point the small, plaintive peep-peep of the young birds crying to be fed. One little grebe, more cunning or more fortunate than the others, had at last succeeded in bringing off her young; and once out of their shells they were safe. But by-and-by the little duckling-like sound was heard at another point, and then at another; and this continued in September, until, by the middle of that month, you could walk miles along the river, and before you left the sound of one little brood hungrily crying to be fed behind you, the little peep-peep of another brood would begin to be heard in advance of you.
Often enough it is "dogged as does it" in bird as well as in human affairs, and never had birds more deserved to succeed than these dogged little grebes. I doubt if a single pair failed to bring out at least a couple of young by the end of September. And at that date you could see young birds apparently just out of the shell, while those that had been hatched in August were full grown.
Fishing-lessons
About the habits of the little grebe, as about those of the moor-hen, many curious and entertaining things have been written; but what amused me most in these birds, when I watched them in late September on the Itchen, was the skilful way in which the parent bird taught her grown-up young ones to fish. At an early period the fishes given to the downy young are very small, and are always well bruised in the beak before the young bird is allowed to take it, however eager he may be to seize it. Afterwards, when the young are more grown, the size of the fishes is increased, and they are less and less bruised, although always killed. Finally, the young has to be taught to catch for himself; and at first he does not appear to have any aptitude for such a task, or any desire to acquire it. He is tormented with hunger, and all he knows is that his parent can catch fish for him, and his only desire is that she shall go on catching them as fast as he can swallow them. And she catches him a fish, and gives it to him, but, oh mockery! it was not really dead this time, and instantly falls into the water and is lost! Not hopelessly lost, however, for down she goes like lightning, and comes up in ten seconds with it again. And he takes and drops it again, and looks stupid, and again she recovers and gives it to him. How many hundreds of times, I wonder, must this lesson be repeated before the young grebe finds out how to keep and to kill? Yet that is after all only the beginning of his education. The main thing is that he must be taught to dive after the fishes he lets fall, and he appears to have no inclination, no intuitive impulse, to do such a thing. A small, quite dead fish must be given him carelessly, so that it shall fall, and he must be taught to pick up a fallen morsel from the surface; but from that first simple act to the swift plunge and long chase after and capture of uninjured vigorous fishes, what an immense distance there is! It is, however, probable that, after the first reluctance of the young bird has been overcome, and a habit of diving after escaped fishes acquired, he makes exceedingly rapid progress.