120 Bird-Nesting 



shade, spotted with l)i'o\vu. The curlew can easily be recog- 

 nized by its long, curved bill, which measures eight or nine 

 inches in length. 



While I sat down blowing these eggs, a prairie wolf came 

 along around the margin of the slough, and he evidently did 

 not notice me until he got within fifty feet, when I halloed, 

 and this caused him to run back. He ran up a slope and then 

 came to a standstill and looked back at me, and then turning- 

 round disappeared behind the ridge. Prairie wolves, like 

 foxes, are fond of ducks which they capture about the sloughs 

 and lakes, and I frequently saw wolves around the margins of 

 the lakes where they also come to drink. There were a num- 

 ber of coots, shovellers, mallards, scaup, widgeons, and blue- 

 winged teals swinnning about the slough, and most of them 

 had young ones which they led away to the other side of the 

 water. A large brown bird flew up out of a cluster of rushes, 

 which gave me (piite a start as I brushed passed it, and peep- 

 ing through the rushes my eyes gazed on a nest and four 

 beautiful eggs of the American bittern. The nest was rather 

 large, and made of sedges. It stood about a foot high, and the 

 iDottom of the nest rested in the water. The top of the nest had a 

 cavity the size of a saucer, and the eggs are brownish-drab with 

 a greyish shade, something after the style of colouring of 

 the English pheasant's ag^^. They average in size 2.00x1.50. 

 American bitterns are plentiful among the bogs and marshes 

 of the North-West, and I fre(|uently heard them towards dusk 

 during my stay at Long Lake in Manitoba. They are also 

 found on the island opposite Toronto, Lake Ontario, where I 

 have flushed them on several occasions. They generally begin 

 to boom towards dusk : they make a peculiar noise which 

 sounds like a mallet striking a stake : something like the syl- 

 lables, chiink-a-ltmk-cJtunk, qiiauk, chwnl--a-lvnk-chv.nk. The 

 bittern is a wild, shy, solitary bird, and more often heard than 

 seen, as it haunts impenetrable bogs, where it finds plenty to 

 eat, and after feeding it stands motionless for hours, half dazed. 

 When surprised, it springs into the air with a croak, and flies 

 off with its legs dangling down behind and its neck out- 



