Some Pugnacious Coots
Some Pugnacious Coots
Our boat house rests in a cut opening out of Butte Slough, in Colusa County, California. Between the end of the boat house and the current of the slough, there are sixty or eighty feet of still water; three Mud Hens (Fulica americanal) have taken possession of this spot. They have grown quite tame; not only do they come up to the boat house for their food, but when hungry swim up and are clamorously insistent with their “put-put-put”.
The men have frequently told me that they were murderous fighters against their own kind, and one day I was a witness of such a fight. A strange Mud Hen swam from the creek into the quiet water. The first of the three to see him attacked the stranger at once, “putting” harshly, and the intruder gave battle without the slightest attempt to retreat. They pecked at each other savagely. The other two boat house Mud Hens swam up to the fray, one of them joining in, the other, the smallest of the three and probably the female, simply looking on. In time they pecked the strange Mud Hen into a state of exhaustion. It was manifestly too weak to fly, but tried to make its escape by swimming. They followed it up, and one actually stood on its body while the other held its head under the water until it was dead. When satisfied of this, they left it.
The men tell me that nearly every day they murder one of their kind in this manner, and yet oddly enough they pay not the slightest attention to crippled ducks which drift down the current and often take refuge in the same cut. It would, of course, be perfectly easy for the Mud Hen which is attacked to escape by flight, but in no instance, my men say, has one ever attempted to do so.
The third and smaller Mud Hen never takes part in the fight, but is always an interested spectator. Once a battle began when only one of the boat house Mud Hens was present, but its call soon brought the other two, which had drifted down the creek, and they came back to the rescue flying. It seemed to me to be a curious phase of pugnacity, considering the gregarious habits of the bird.
F. W. Henshaw
San Francisco, January 26, 1918
