Bittern

a wading bird closely related to the heron. The common American bittern breeds from the central part of the United States northward, and passes the winter in the South Atlantic and Gulf states. Unlike the heron, it is a most unattractive bird. It is about twenty-eight inches in length, and has a slender, meager, buffy-brown, streaked appearance, hardly distinguishable from old grass. When alarmed it has a habit of standing in a sort of rigor, with its long bill held upright, like a dead weed. Even a practiced eye will pass it carelessly by for a clump of old weeds and grass. Long, loose, fluffy, drooping feathers about the neck and breast aid in deceiving the eye.

The bittern lives solitary in marshy places, picking up frogs and snakes which it prefers to mangle by threshing them on the ground before it swallows them. Three to five pale olive buff eggs are deposited in a grass-built nest amid the rushes of some marsh. The voice of the bittern is peculiar. Sometimes it sounds' not unlike an old wooden pump out of order, from which the bird gets the name of "thunder pumper." Sometimes the call sounds surprisingly like that made by driving a stake with an ax, whence the name, "stake driver." A far less elegant but no less appropriate name is that of "shitepoke" given by Dutch settlers.

A smaller, darker colored bird, the least bittern, thirteen inches long, has a somewhat more southern summer and winter range. It has a soft voice. Its habits are similar to those of its larger relative. Pale bluish white eggs, three to six in a grassy nest among rushes or in a low bush.

The common bittern of the Old World is similar to ours in habits and voice. In the fens of England it goes by such local names as mire-drum, and bull-of-the-bog.

The prophet Isaiah completes his picture of the future desolation of Babylon with "I will also make it a possession for the bittern and pools of water"; and again, utter desolation is pictured by "the cormorant and bittern shall possess it."

See Bird