BIG CREEK — In hot pursuit of a Doctor of Philosophy degree, Bruce Lyon arose at 2:30 a.m. this day and crept through the darkness to a reedy lake in Englishman's Pasture on the Chilco Ranch. It was his hope to catch male and female coots in the wrong nests, ideally finding them in what divorce law once called fiagrante delicto. As usual, he didn't. It is now 10 p.m. and after a long, hard day of coot-watching he is heating horrid-looking hash on a two-burner Coleman stove in a log cabin at Bin Go Sha tourist camp on Fletcher Lake. Some days are 18-hour and some are six, and there have been ue ECan wife, but this summer she is on Melville Peninsula in the Arctic, engaged in another research pro- ject. Mr. Lyon's assistant this year is Dan Hanson, undergraduate student at Queens University in Kingston, Ontario. The cabin table is stacked with the spotted taupe eggs of many Their powerful impulses to infidelity, equalled nowhere else in the animal world except in West Vancouver, are only one aspect of the study.’’ many days. This will be the fourth year that Mr. Lyon burns up three months in the observation of one of nature’s less lovely specimens, the American Coot, the old mudhen. Asked if mudhens are in- telligent, he replies the way you'd" expect of a Princeton man. “Put it this way. The coot is not a good problem-solver. He isn’t in a class with ravens or par- rots. But he has the intelligence to be extremely good at being a Ducks, which are so much more attractive, are not as good at be- ing ducks. They are in such rapid decline that hunters’ bag limits will be cut this year. But Mudhens are numerous as ever On their limited feeding grounds. They are also as bad tempered, mean, sneaky, loud, irascible, overbear- ing and oversexed as usual. Never feel fluitered at being called an old coot. Mr. Lyons can tell you why. In other years he was accom- panied in his studies here by his coots, none edible or fragrant. In the refrigerator are more coots, young and old, who died to ad- vance science. The 12 months of concentrated mudhen staring was devoted to discovering why this unlovely species seems so extravagantly unendangered. Coots just go on and on. Their powerful impulses to in- fidelity, equalled nowhere else in the animal world except in West Vancouver, are only one aspect of the study. But it is an intriguing aspect. it has Icng been known that female coots lay eggs in other fe- male coots’ nests. The foster mother, who has plenty of kids of her own, pushes the strange eggs into cold water where they fail to hatch, but in the confusion which is common to large families, she misses a few and raises some youngsters which are not her own. (To make it all come out even, she sneaks next door and lays some of her eggs in the other coot’s nest.) ANNOUNCEMENT Vancouver Jeep Eagle Lid. is very pleased to announce that Ray Kennedy has joined their professional sales staff. A question is, how are these lit- tle love tokens deposited? Coots are ferocious protectors of their own territory. Other birds strut and pout when their territory is invaded. Coots fight one another to death. So how can the egg transfers be effected? One theory is that coots are doubly infidelitous. “The transfers occur at night, and nights are when the males are usually on the nests. It may be that the female seduces her neighbor’s mate and when he is in the relaxed post-coital state she hops into his wife’s nest and de- posits an egg. “If this is true, then after she deposits another male’s egg in her neighbor’s nest, she returns to her own nest with an egg fertilized by the guy next door. Cuckoldry becomes a further rearrangement of the communal genes.”’ it is Mr. Lyon’s suspicion that all this toing and froing from one suburban swamp bed to another contains a hidden agenda for the survival of the coot species. He points out that up to 80 per cent of all coot chicks die of starvation and the marsh hawks and eagles eat lots more of them. Also, coot homes are not happy homes. Coot parents beat hell out of their kids when they feel like do- ing so. and husbands and wives are often snarly with one another. The Princeton-Queens university team is considering buying an in- fra-red detector lamp so that on their 2:30 a.m. nights they may possibly be able to photograph the infidelitous American Coot without him being aware that somebody is peeping in the tran- som of the hotel room. Meanwhile they are trapping coots, taking blood samples and unravelling DNA molecules to determine who is whom’s parent out there where the tules bloom. When Bruce Lyon has his PhD, we may know the answers to such questions. So may National Geographic, who gave him a grant. On the other hand, we may not. Mavybe the coots don’t know ei- ther. Ray's years of experience coupled with the highest degree of customer service is your assurance of excellence. Ray welcomes all of his previous North Shore customers and new clients to join in “SUMMER JEEP FUN” Call Ray today for all your inquiries Retail and Leasing available. 1577 MAIN ST. VANCOUVER JEEP EAGLE VANCOUVER 687-JEEP 687-5337 9 - Friday, July 13, 1990 - North Shore News GVRD papers available PUBLICATIONS chronicling the Greater Vancouver Regional District Choosing Our Future liv- able region strategy review are now available to the public. information gathered during a series of regional seminars covers issues including traffic, health care, pollution and social and demographic trends. 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