NORTH AMERICAN MARSH BIRDS 89 



its stomach. Small fishes tadpoles, and small frogs probably make 

 up a lai-ge part of its food; but lizards, snails, slugs, leeches, beetles, 

 and other insects are included. One that C. J. Maynard (1896) had 

 in captivity killed and devoured a pet humming bird. 



Behavior. — When surprised or suddenly flushed the least bittern 

 rises in weak and awkward, fluttering flight, with neck extended and 

 feet dangling, usually dropping down into the marsh again at a short 

 distance; but when going somewhere on a long flight, it draws in its 

 head and extends its legs behind, after the manner of the herons, and 

 proceeds with a strong, direct flight which may be quite protracted 

 and rather swift. If not too much hurried, it seems to prefer to 

 escape by walking, or climbing, through the reeds, at which it is very 

 expert and makes remarkable speed. Where the water is too deep 

 to wade and where the reeds grow close together the bittern walks, 

 or even runs, through them at a height of 2 or 3 feet above the water, 

 grasping a single upright reed or two or three of them together with 

 each foot; often it is a wide, straddling gait, with many long strides; 

 it is accomplished with so much speed, skill, and accuracy as to seem 

 little short of marvellous; like a squirrel in the tree tops, or a marsh 

 wren in the reeds, there seems to be never a slip or a missed step. 

 When wading in shallow water, or walking on land, its movements 

 are quick and graceful, its head shooting forward at eacli step. To 

 facilitate its passage through the narrow spaces between the reeds, 

 its has the power of comprosing its body laterally; Audubon (1840) 

 found by experiment that it would compress its body sufficiently to 

 pass through a space 1 inch wide. 



The well known hiding pose, or reedlike attitude, of tlie least bit- 

 tern is well described by Dr. Arthur A. Allen (1915), as follows: 



I parted the flags and counted the eggs before I finally perceived that there, 

 on the back of the nest and in perfectly plain sight, stood the female bird less 

 than 3 feet from my eyes. Under other circumstances, I should not have called 

 it a bird, such was the strangeness of the shape which it had assumed. The 

 photograph showing the "reed posture" gives one but a poor conception of the 

 bird's real appearance at this time. The feafhers were fairly glued to the body, 

 and the head and neck appeared no thicker than some of the dried reeds that 

 composed the nest. The bill, pointing directly upward, widened barely appre- 

 ciably into the head and neck, and the feathers of the lower neck were held free 

 from the body and compressed to as narrow a point as the bill at the other end. 

 The neck appeared to be entirely separate from the body, which was flattened 

 so as to become but a part of the nest itself. There wa,s not a movement, not even 

 a turning of the scrpentlike eyes which glared at me over the corners of the 

 mouth. Every line was stiff and straight, every curve was an angle. It mat- 

 tered not that all about the vegetation was a brilliant green, while the bird was 

 buffy brown. It was no more a bird than was the nest below it. I recalled the 

 habit of the American bittern of rotating so as always to keep its striped neck 

 towards the observer, and I moved slowly to another side of the nest. But this 

 bird was not relying upon the color of its neck to conceal it. It was quite as 

 iinbirdlike from any angle, and it moved not a feather. 



