COMMON BITTERN. 167 
As Mr. Lubbock remarks, the known instances of 
either nests or young of this bird having been found are 
somewhat rare, but to those cited in his “ Fauna” may 
be added the notice by Messrs. Gurney and Fisher of a 
young bird* taken by Mr. D. B. Preston many years ago, 
together with an addled egg, from a nest at Ranworth, 
a broad specially mentioned by Messrs. Paget as a 
breeding haunt of the bittern, and where, according to 
the late Mr. Girdlestone’s notes, a bittern was once shot 
on the 11th of May, in the act of feeding her young. 
Mr. A. Newton is in possession of a bittern’s ege, 
obtained from Mr. E. S. Preston, who assured him 
that it came from the collection of the late Mr. John 
Smith, of Yarmouth, and that it was taken at Horsey, 
in 1841.+ A very interesting account also of a young 
Norfolk bittern, from the pen of Mr. Jecks, of Thorpe, 
near Norwich, is published in a small work by the Rev. 
K. 8. Dixon, formerly of Cringleford, on “the Dove- 
cote and Aviary.t This bird, was picked up alive by 
a wherryman, in some marshes near Yarmouth, about 
the year 1845, and was in an unfledged state. It 
was extremely shy at first and refused all food, but 
eventually took kindly to a fish diet, and when once 
settled in its new home became very pugnacious, and 
would snap its beak viciously at all visitors, but proved 
an arrant coward when resolutely approached. It would 
eat fish and small birds, swallowing the latter whole 
* See “ Zoologist” for 1846, p. 1521, where a figure of this 
young bittern is given in Messrs. Gurney and Fisher’s paper on 
the “ Birds of Norfolk.” 
+ Mr. A. Newton has also another British bittern’s egg, which 
formerly belonged to Mr. J. Wolley. This was taken with three 
others in 1849 or 1850, on the borders of a reservoir, near Tring, 
Hertfordshire. 
tf “The Dovecote and Aviary,” by the Rev. E. 8. Dixon, M.A., 
London, 1851. 
