AND NEIGHBOURHOOD. 129 



think that his line of capacity would be drawn at a 

 full-grown water-rat and a half-grown water-hen. In 

 the reed-beds Bitterns will allow of a very close 

 approach ; on the first suspicious sound they draw 

 themselves out to their full length with their feathers 

 tightly compressed and beaks pointing straight to the 

 sky, so as to present as small a front as possible, and, 

 as I firmly believe, with a view to the chance of 

 remaining undiscovered from the similarity of their 

 plumage to the brown and yellow vegetation that 

 surrounds them. On the very close approach of man, 

 these birds, if they believe they are not observed, turn 

 their bodies gradually and cautiously, so as always to 

 present their front to tlie enemy, but if once the 

 human eye meets theirs, they either rise by climbing 

 " hand over hand " for a second or two up the reed- 

 stems before spreading their wings, or lowering their 

 necks, vanish into the jungle with the ease and speed 

 of a Water-Rail. I once, in the above circumstance, 

 came so close upon a Bittern, Avho evidently thought 

 that I had not seen him, that I made a back-handed 

 clutch at his extended neck, and actually touched 

 the feathers, but failed to grasp it from a broken 

 reed-stem running into my palm, my friend stole 

 quietly off to a more swampy and inaccessible part of 

 the jungle. In Epirus, where this occurrence took 

 place, the Bittern is common during the winter months, 

 but I never met with this species anywhere in such 

 abundance as in the great reed-marshes of Eastern 

 Sicily in the neighbourhood of Catania and Syracuse, 

 where its extraordinary love-song was frequently to 

 be heard in March from our yacht's anchorage. This 

 note has a distant resemblance to the lowing of a 

 bull, and is generally preceded by three or four 



VOL. II. K 



