COMMON BITTERN 35 
season, is described by most ornithologists as ‘bellowing’ 
or ‘booming’; it is deep and full, and carries a long 
distance. Mr. Harting, in confuting the fabulous ideas 
that the beak is stuck in the ground, in the water, or 
within a reed, states that when watching a Bittern 
‘bellowing’ only ten yards off, he proved by observation 
that the beak ‘‘1s pointed vertically upwards, resembling at 
a little distance a green reed stem amidst faded leaves ”’ 
(Handbook Brit. Birds, 1901, p. 219). The wailing of the 
Banshee, one of the many apparitions which haunt the 
credulous minds of superstitious country-folk in Ireland, 
may have had its origin in the ‘ booming’ of the Bittern, 
weird and strange when heard at a distance, after dusk and 
in the dead of mght. 
“For in the Bittern’s distant shriek 
I heard unearthly voices speak.” 
At other times of the year the note of the Bittern is 
harsh and one-syllabled, somewhat like that of the Heron. 
Food.—The Common Bittern is almost omnivorous; it 
devours a considerable number of small mammals and birds 
as well as its more ordinary diet of fish, frogs, reptiles, snails 
and insects. It seeks its food principally at night. 
Nest.—This species builds on the ground, on bog-lands 
and swamps, densely overgrown with reed-beds. The nest 
is generally well hidden from view; it is made chiefly of 
dry reeds and rushes, piled together into a considerable 
mass. 
The eggs, usually four in number, are hight brownish, 
often showing an olive-green tinge. Incubation begins 
early in April, sometimes at the end of March. 
The latest date of the breeding of the Bittern in England, 
as given by Stevenson, ‘ Birds of Norfolk’ and other writers, 
is March 30th, 1868, when a nest containing two eggs was 
discovered on Upton Broad, Norfolk. On May 25th of the 
same year a nestling was taken from the same place. But 
we have further evidence, though not absolute proof, of the 
Bittern breeding in the same district several years later, for, 
in August, 1886, “a young bird with down still adhering to 
it was obtained” (Saunders). 
In Ireland the Bittern has ceased to breed since about 
1840; Thompson mentions in his ‘ Natural History of 
Ireland,’ vol. 11, that a female was shot off her nest with 
nestlings, in co. Tipperary, in August a few years before 
