254 HERON TRIBE 



upright with its beak held vertically in the air ; such a position 

 rendering it, of course, still more difficult to see amid the vertical 

 stems of reeds and bulrushes. As a rule the nest, which is built of 

 flags or other coarse herbage, is placed among reeds, rushes, or, in 

 India, growing rice ; and at the proper season contains from five to 

 nine green-tinged white eggs measuring i^ inches, or rather less, in 

 their longer diameter. 



Bittern ^^ ^'^^ ^^'^ days when the curfew of St. Mary's 



(Botaurus Church, Cambridge, was rung as a guide to belated 



stellaris) travellers in the fens, and Ely was really an island 



in the midst of an almost impassable and malarious 

 swamp, the booming of the bittern was a familiar sound in spring and 

 summer to all fen-men and wayfarers in the fen-districts. In the 

 fourteenth century we learn indeed from documentar)' evidence that 

 bitterns commonly nested in the fens around Ely ; and on account of 

 the estimation in which these fine birds were held for the table it was 

 a criminal offence to collect and carry their eggs out of the district. 

 Bitterns bred, however, in the fens and in Norfolk to a much later 

 date than this, and a nest was taken on the Cam in 1821, another in 

 the Norfolk Broads about the year 1 846, a third on Tring Reservoir 

 in 1849 ^^ 1S50, a fourth some years later in Buckinghamshire, and 

 a sixth in Norfolk in 1868, where a nestling was captured the following 

 spring. Nowadays this splendid bird is only a casual visitor to the 

 British Isles in winter and spring ; although a considerable flight visited 

 us in the winter of 1904-5, most of the members of which appear to 

 have met the fate commonly accorded to such claimants to British 

 hospitality and protection. Sooner or later it must, indeed, we fear, be 

 recognised that an age of motors is incompatible with the existence of 

 the rarer large birds in all but the wilder and more or less inaccessible 

 parts of the country. In Ireland, where it is known as the bunnan, 

 the bittern apparently ceased to breed about the year 1 840. In 

 Scotland the bird never seems to have been very common, although 

 individuals occasionally wandered so far north as the Outer Hebrides, 

 the Shetlands, and the Orkneys. 



In many parts of continental Europe, up to between lat. 60 and 

 62', the bittern is still a common breeding-bird ; while eastward its 

 range extends to western Siberia, whence it visits in winter India, 

 Burma, and China. In the west its winter-range includes the north- 

 eastern countries of the African continent. 



As a genus (of which there are five species, with a collectively 



