Although they swarmed on all the Broads and other fresh-water lakes of fair size, they were harassed by guns continually throughout the winter and had their nests plundered freely later on. The reckless exploitation of these birds continued until, by the 1880s, it was noticed that they had become rather scarce. The Coot Custard Fair had perforce to die out. In the present century, coot are present in greater or lesser numbers on all the Broads, but in some areas, as at Surlingham and Rockland, they are nothing like so numerous as they were in the good old days, either in the nesting season or during the autumn and winter when the Continental 'flighting coot' come in. Hickling Broad is, as ever, their chief rendezvous, and there have been occasions, even in recent years, when they could be counted 'by the acre' on that noble sheet of shallow water.
Coot are alert, noisy and quarrelsome birds.
When alarmed they utter a sharp metallic clinking sound rather like that made by a hammer striking an anvil. They fight with their feet as well as their strong beaks and defend themselves from their enemies with the utmost ferocity. I remember being badly scratched and bitten by a coot which I had rescued one autumn night after it had dropped through a skylight of a house in Yarmouth, mistaking the glass for water. It was as much as I could do to carry the bird to the Haven Bridge, where I released it over the river. One of the most remarkable sights on the Broads in a severe winter is that of packs of coot running like black pigmies over the ice.