Page:The Common Birds of Bombay.djvu/192

176 but its dumpy figure and very short tail serve to distinguish it even before one gets near enough to make out its uniform black colour and conspicuous white bill. The presence of Coots on any water is said to encourage and attract Ducks, and the two are often found in company; but when a gunner gets among them the Ducks are soon gone, while the Coots remain. When they do take wing they rise with difficulty, beating the water with their wings and feet. Then they fly slowly round and soon settle again. For this reason they are very satisfactory game to a "sportsman" who finds that he has no luck with Ducks. I have not seen a Coot in Bombay, except in the guise of a present of game, but it is very common everywhere in the neighbourhood.

Near to the Waterhens Jerdon.puts the Jacanas. Blanford relegates them to a different Order, and he may be right; but we are not concerned with their "true inwardness" here. Outwardly they are Waterhens which neither haunt the borderland of rushes, like the Rail, nor swim out into the deep, like the Coot, but walk upon the water. Their toes are so long that, wherever the weeds and water-lilies are at all thick, they can travel with as much ease as a Laplander on his snow shoes. The paradise of the Jacana is one of those ancient tanks, choked with crimson and white-flowered lotus, which are at once the wealth and the glory of an Indian village; where the women fill their waterpots and wash their clothes, and the men bathe and the buffaloes wallow and everybody is happy; where no thought of microbe and bacillus blows across the placid calm of life, and the Pasteur-Mallie filter is unknown. We are rapidly infecting the