Least Bittern 201 



clusters of reeds and rushes among which its Ufe is spent. Audubon, who kept 

 some of them in captivity for a time, found that they could easily pass through 

 a crack only one inch in width, and this without any special effort or evidence 

 of distress on the part of the bird. Like the Rail and some other water birds, it 

 has the power of greatly compressing its body, thus making it thinner than at 

 normal times. 



The home of the Least Bittern is in the fresh-water marshes. Rarely, along 

 the Atlantic coast and down along the Gulf of Mexico, I have seen the bird in 

 salt-water marshes, but all search for its nest in these localities has been in 

 vain. One characteristic of the Herons is their habit of coming together in 

 numbers for the purpose of laying their eggs. Very often hundreds, or even 

 thousands, of several different species will be thus congregated. The bird we 

 are discussing, however, does not have this habit. In a growth of buttonwood 

 bushes, in the shallow waters of a small Florida lake, I once found five nests 

 of the Least Bittern within a few yards of one another, but such occurrences, 

 in my opinion, are rare. Usually, the birds seem to prefer to be alone. On a 

 few occasions I have found them nesting in bushes in the midst of a colony of 

 Boat-tailed Crackles, but I suspected that they chose the locality because it 

 seemed especially suitable for their nesting purposes and not because they 

 sought the society of their large black neighbors. 



Enemies the Least Bittern certainly has. Water-snakes capture the young 

 and perhaps at times eat the eggs. Muskrats, found in nearly every marsh, 

 are to be dreaded, as are minks and Hawks. Fish Crows are ever on the 

 lookout for eggs and perhaps this is the reason why the birds bend down- 

 ward the tops of the rushes to shield the eggs from above. The draining of 

 marshes, which thus destroys their feeding and nesting places, has caused 

 these birds to become scarce in many parts of the country. 



The Least Bittern ranges over a large part of North America, being found 

 in summer from Oregon and the southern Canadian provinces southward 

 throughout the United States, West Indies, Central America and northern 

 South America. When winter comes, the birds in Canada and the United 

 States retire southward, and none are known to pass the winter north of the 

 region immediately bordering the Gulf Coast. 



