. The birds of Berwickshire; with remarks on their local distribution migration, and habits, and also on the folk-lore, proverbs, popular rhymes and sayings connected with them . l theblack down by means of powdered resin and boilingwater, and then to let them soak all night in cold springwater; by which they are made to look as white and asdelicate as a chicken, and to eat tolerably well; butwithout this process, the skin in roasting produces a sortof oil with a fishy taste and smell, and if the skin be 1 Mr. Hardy, writing under date the 7th of March 1860, notes that Cootsreturned to Townhea
. The birds of Berwickshire; with remarks on their local distribution migration, and habits, and also on the folk-lore, proverbs, popular rhymes and sayings connected with them . l theblack down by means of powdered resin and boilingwater, and then to let them soak all night in cold springwater; by which they are made to look as white and asdelicate as a chicken, and to eat tolerably well; butwithout this process, the skin in roasting produces a sortof oil with a fishy taste and smell, and if the skin be 1 Mr. Hardy, writing under date the 7th of March 1860, notes that Cootsreturned to Townhead farm mill pond, where they breed and erect a high andhalf-floating nest made of rushes and In the autumn a shepherdencountered a Coot migrating by the wood border at North Cleugh to the PeaseBurn. He caught her, and she bit him severely.—MS. Notes. 206 THE COMMON COOT. taken off, the bird becomes dry and good for nothing. ACoot shot in the morning, just after roosting, is worththree killed in the day when full of grass, because it willthen be whiter and milder in flavour. ^ 1 Yarrells British Birds, fourth edition, vol. iii. pp. 176, 177. ^ ^{■.>?-r-^. ALECTORIDES. ( 207 ) OTIDIDJE. THE GREAT tarda. The big-boand Bustard then, whose body beares that he against the wind must runne, eer he can rise. Drayton, Polyolbion. Although there is no record of the Great Bustard havingbeen found in Berwickshire since the early part of thesixteenth century, it may not be out of place to refer toit here, for the first British author who gave any accountof the bird wrote of it in 1526 as then inhabiting theMerse. This was Hector Boece, who says : Besides these,we have, moreover, another foule in Mers more strange anduncouth than all these aforementioned, called a Gustard,fully so great as a Swanue, but in colour of feathers andtaste of flesh little differing from a Partriche; howbeit thesebyrdes are not verie common, nayther to be seen in allplaces;
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