Certain it is that inexperienced sportsmen frequently shoot and eat coots under the impression that they are "black duck.
What is more to the point, some observers have seen coots attacked by birds of prey.
She maintains that coots are "very good for eating, but they are not often used for the table, chiefly because they are so difficult to pluck, except when quite warm.
I wonder if these leetle coots think I'm soft enough to believe that an honest, harnsome gal like Miss Miles, lies abed till ten o'clock.
I swow, it made me grit my teeth to see what tarnal coots the whole consarn were a making of themselves!
I couldn't look at 'em without feeling my dander rise, yet I couldn't help but be sort of glad that the great people from foreign parts made as tarnal coots of themselves as we du here to hum.
The manner in which Coots build their nest is very ingenious.
Riding towards the small lagoon of Zopiton on April 16th, its surface was seen to be dotted all over with waterfowl--ducks and divers, coots and grebes.
The Coots and Mallards have eggs in March, the Purple Heron early in April: on the 9th we found the first nest, merely an armful of the long green reeds bent down, and containing one blue egg.
We have also observed similar phenomena alongside the nests of the coots themselves--doubtless attributable to the same cause.
As early as February (and sometimes even in January) the abounding coots begin to lay.
Coots also frequent the lagoons, but in smaller numbers.
On the other hand, the great purple water-hens habitually do a bit robbery and murder on their own account, plundering the nests both of ducks and coots and devouring eggs or young alike.
At the first shoot of the year fully 25 per cent of the spoil are coots; but at the later shoots ducks are obtained in greater proportion, as coots then quit the rice-grounds.
There was literally no covert within which these ducks (and the swarming coots and grebes) could breed, even were they so minded--which they were not!
Small birds chirped in the sedges, and the water-hens and white-headed coots sailed busily to and fro.
Coots and water-hens' eggs are so like their nests, that at a little distance you cannot tell whether there are eggs in or not.
It was some time before they could get the excited spaniel on board; so soon as they could, Bevis poled the raft along to Bamboo Island, where several coots and moorhens had taken refuge.
The moorhens and coots had now recovered from the fright Pan had given them.
Some coots were swimming about the edge of the weeds too far to fear them.
Swans, ducks, and cootshad been killed in such numbers, that on their return all the schooner's crew were plentifully supplied.
He is trying to drift down close to that flock of coots before they see him.
It seems rather remarkable that my fisherman-owl did not make a try at the coots that were so plenty about him.
Coots herd together in flocks; they make their nests on the reeds in the water, and lay from eight to fourteen eggs.
Coots but rarely visit the dry fields, where they move about with great difficulty; on the other hand, they swim and dive with graceful ease.
The moorhens dive, and thecoots scuttle down the brook towards the mere at the flash.
In one hedge an opening leads to a drinking-place for cattle: peering noiselessly over the parapet between the boughs, the coots and moorhens may be seen there feeding by the shore.
In the mere below the coots are at play; they chase each other along the surface of the water and indulge in wild evolutions.
The marsh is left to the coots and moorhens that from thence stock the brooks.
He pointed to a party of about half a dozen coots which came slowly out of the reeds and then sailed on again as if suspicious of all being not quite right.
There were some coots by a bed of reeds, and a couple of divers, one of which disappeared from time to time in the most business-like manner, and came up at the end of a long line of bubbles many yards away.
There were wild geese, ducks, and coots from the river--the winged pests were in legions.
There are plenty of moor hens, coots and dab-chicks on the lake-like expansion of the Ivel near the mill.
Moorhens, coots and dabchicks are abundant; the reed-sparrow is heard only in a few districts.
Strings of black surf-ducks passed, their strong wings tipping the surface of the water; single wandering coots whirled from the breakers into lonely flight towards the horizon.
Ye'd orter see the coots in Californy," wailed the voice of the shifty spectre on the outskirts.
Gallinules have a frontal shield on the forehead, Coots have lobate-webbed feet, short, whitish bills.
All the little birds in the reeds began to cry out, and the coots sought shelter in the larger clumps of reeds.
The willow-wands on the knolls are in flower, and behind the points of land the coots are quarrelling, while the snipe fly round and round in the air, and let the wind play upon their feather-harps.
At intervals of a day she took both the grebes and cleared the creeks of coots and a couple of young storks that had come for the purpose of learning to fish.
About midnight we arrived at the house of William Coots (well-known as old Bill Coots,) who had heretofore invariably represented himself as a Rebel of unusual bitterness.
On passing the house of old Bill Coots he was halted, at which he did not seem to be the least alarmed, but expressed the utmost surprise when the whole tragedy was related to him.
These Jack decided must be the nests of the grebes, for he remembered that the eggs of the coots are spotted, and besides, would be larger than these eggs.
Jack knew, of course, that the first of these were cootsor mud hens, and the others were grebes, and he knew also that somewhere close by would be found their nests.
The above list will hopefully give you a few useful examples demonstrating the appropriate usage of "coots" in a variety of sentences. We hope that you will now be able to make sentences using this word.
