By Mill-Pond and Meadow. 165 



direction of the wind, the Hght or heavy atmosphere, 

 whether heard by day or by night, — all these con- 

 ditions go far to determine the impression made 

 upon us by this wild and wary bird, whose cry may 

 sometimes be mistaken for the noise made by a 

 workman busy in the marsh, or a locomotive in the 

 distance discharging surplus steam. I have some- 

 times wondered if ventriloquism was not a factor, 

 for I have frequently heard the booming — this oom- 

 l^fik — sounding as if it had travelled a mile or more 

 over the meadow, when in reality the bird has been 

 but a few rods away. When all the conditions are 

 favorable, it proves to be a trisyllabic utterance, but 

 not quite the '' be gush'' suggested by a plain- 

 spoken countryman, who said that '' these frog-eatin' 

 grunters once kep' me awake o' nights." There is 

 no such abundance of bitterns nowadays. They are 

 seen alone or in pairs, and parcel out the country so 

 that each pair or individual ranges over a wide terri- 

 tory unfrequented by others. The old miller said 

 that there was never more than one pair at a time 

 about the pond, so far as he had noticed, and some 

 years there were none, he added, with some bitter- 

 ness. 



''There are no ducks now, like there was some 

 twenty years ago. Everything looks the same to 

 me, but it's changed to them. 'Long late in the 

 fall, when there was no more fishermen and pic- 

 nickers, the black-and-white butter-balls would come 

 in, and they bobbed about like corks when the 

 water's rough. One season I threw stuff out on the 



