Bittern
Bittern names 3 different subjects across the 6 encyclopedias on this shelf. Each is set out below.
Bittern a wading bird closely related to the heron
Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)
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
Bittern the English name for the birds of the genus botaurus
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
the English name for the birds of the genus botaurus, and especially for the common one, botaurus stel- Laris. The bitterns are distinguished from the herons proper, besides other characteristics, by having the feathers of the neck loose and divided, which makes it appear thicker than in reality it is. They are usually spotted or striped. The species are widely distributed, the best known being botaurus lentigonosus, B. stellaris, and B. minutus, inhabiting the temperate portions of both hemispheres. B. stellaris is in some localities named the "mire drum" or the "bull of the bog," etc., in allusion to its " AVC BITTERN bellowing or drumming noise about February or March, during the breeding season. It is about 2½ feet long. The general color of its plumage is dull, pale yellow, variegated with spots and bars of black. The feathers of the head are black, shot with green; the bill and legs are pale green; the middle claw is serrated on the inner edge. It is nocturnal. It frequents wooded swamps and reedy marshes. B. minutus is much smaller. B. lentigonosus is common in this country.
Bittern a name given to the mother liquid obtained when
Collier's New Encyclopedia (1921)
a name given to the mother liquid obtained when sea water is evaporated to extract the salt (NaCl). Bittern contains sulphates of magnesium, potassium and sodium, also bromides. It is used as a source of bromine. Under the name of oil of salt, it is sometimes used to relieve rheumatism.
What Has Changed in the Last Century
When Aiton's wrote in 1910 the bittern was almost a memory in England: drained fens had ended British breeding in the 1880s, and only around 1911 did birds return to nest in Norfolk. Numbers crashed again to about a dozen booming males in the late 1990s, after which deliberately dug and managed reedbeds — in Somerset, Lancashire and East Anglia — lifted the British population above 200 booming males, one of conservation's clearest successes. The names have moved too: Collier's 1921 genus Botaurus now holds only the big bitterns, the least and little bitterns having been shifted to Ixobrychus, and the "bittern" of Isaiah is rendered in modern Bibles as hedgehog, porcupine or owl. The chemical bittern is still drawn off salt pans, but bromine now comes chiefly from underground brines and the Dead Sea rather than from sea-salt residues.
Written for this edition, 2026.