96 THE DIRDS OF THE BRITISH ISLES. 



times before the pause, another eight or nine, and once I 

 heard twelve booms in quick succession, but suspect that an 

 answering male had taken up the challenge before the other 

 had finished. At close quarters, two or three preliminary 

 grunts or coughs are audible, followed by a sound like an 

 inspiration ; the boom bellowed only a few feet away, was not 

 very loud ; it is its carrying power that is so remarkable. When 

 booming, the bird points the bill upward. The male booms 

 in the vicinity of but not very near the nest, but whether his 

 notes are intended for the edification of the female, are a 

 challenge, or merely a social signal, is hard to determine. 

 That male answers male is certain, and Miss Turner witnessed 

 one high aerial skirmish between two birds, but could not tell 

 the sex of the rivals. The Bittern feeds on the smaller 

 animals of the marsh, and is a great eel-catcher. When the 

 young are hatched the female makes frequent journeys to some 

 dyke, deep bog, or other selected feeding ground, perhaps a 

 mile from the nest, where for half an hour or more she collects 

 food, returning with her gullet visibly distended. Miss Turner 

 saw one nestling disgorge an entire eel nine inches long, and 

 seven inches of another. 



Most of the nests are in reeds and built of reeds, but one I saw 

 was in sedge of no great height. It was a very large platform, 

 about thirty inches across, trodden down by the birds, supported 

 in its wet bed by the bent outward stems ; Miss Turner has 

 seen nests wide at water-level, but only fourteen inches across 

 at the top. The eggs (Plate 44), usually five in number, are 

 olive-brown and match the dead reeds or sedge. In the nest I 

 saw were five young and an addled egg. Eggs are laid from 

 the end of March until June. The young when first hatched 

 are quaint little "animated golliwogs"; those in the nest 

 shown on Plate 34 had been hatched from two to three days, 

 but the smallest and weakest less than twenty-four hours. The 

 three oldest sat well up, with their thick, ungainly slate-blue 



