Birds in Literature 



BITTERN, American 



Like the other members of its family, it excels in stand- 

 ing still, and will hold its head erect and motionless amid 

 the tall grass till the watcher tires of looking and pro- 

 nounces the suspicious object nothing but a stick after 

 all. The bittern's fame rests upon its vocal performance, 

 or ''boom." This is sometimes exactly Hke the working 

 . of an old-fashioned wooden pump, and sometimes — even 

 with the same bird — like the driving of a stake in a bog. 

 .... The strange notes are delivered with equally 

 strange contortions, as if the bird were horribly nauseated, 

 and are preceded by a succession of quick snapping or 

 gulping sounds — "hiccoughs," one observer has called them. 

 No water is employed in the operation, in spite of the 

 circumstantial assertions of several persons who profess to 

 have seen the bird swallowing and then ejecting it. 



ToRREY. Chapman's Handbook of Birds.^^ 



BLACKBIRD, Crow 



He is one of the most brilliant of our bird beauties. 

 Watch him as he ambles over the branches, and when 

 the sunlight strikes him you will wonder who could have 

 been so bhnd as to dub him blackbird. Call him, rather, 

 the black opal. He is a bird of many accomplishments. 

 To begin with, he does not condescend to hop, like ordinary 

 birds, but imitates the crow in his stately walk; then he 

 has a steering apparatus that the small boy might well 



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