Crazy Coot
"Crazy as a coot" is an expression heard more perhaps in America than here, but it has a firm basis in fact. On a hot June evening I was startled by a great commotion in the reeds of a pond. After a moment out came a pair of coot. Like two birds in a Disney film, they floundered at great speed towards the centre of the pond. There they stopped, reversed and turned up their white and black fan-tails to each other. They then retreated slightly, manoeuvred for position, and all of a sudden flew at each other backwards, with tails fiercely outspread. They repeated the attack several times. Between each attack there was a crazy interval of manoeuvre, in which they gravely waltzed round and round each other with a kind of sinister caution, like a pair of Apache dancers Then suddenly they would fly at each other again and fight their extraordinary rearguard action, cack- ling madly, banging their tails at each other, at once very comic and very serious. When the performance was over they left the ring with rather dignified grace and retired to the reeds again, where they appeared to be on the most charming terms with each other.
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