320 THE BIRDS OF SUSSEX. 



Ou January 11th, 1842_, a Bittern was shot near Henfield, 

 and on January 6th, 1849, I received another, shot at 

 Lancing, which was a male, and I found in it two short-tailed 

 field-voles, and nothing else. In November^ 1850, a farm 

 labourer brought me a female Bittern alive, which was 

 standing beside the wharf at West Grinstead. It seemed very 

 weak, and could not or would not fly, but was very fierce 

 on being approached, ruffling out its feathers, especially 

 those of the head and neck, in the form of a shield, and 

 darting up directly in the face of the man who captured it. 

 When quiet, it stood with the whole of the tarsus on the 

 ground, the neck shrunk between the shoulders, the bill 

 pointing straight upward, looking exactly like a tuft of dead 

 sedge. I put it on a little island in a pond surrounded by a 

 wire fence, and retired a short distance, when after remaining 

 a few minutes stationary, where I had set it down, as if in 

 contemplation, with the head lowered nearly to the ground 

 and the neck stretched out, it deliberately walked to the 

 water, which was about three feet deep, and swam slowly to 

 the bank, where it remained quiet, in the position first 

 mentioned. I then caught it, and cut its wing. In swim- 

 ming, the head was stretched out a little, the lower mandible 

 being just above the surface of the Avater. It swam very 

 high, and the under feathers were very little wetted. I put 

 it into the pond again, and it swam with great ease and 

 deliberation some eight or ten yards, as if quite accustomed 

 to the water. The next morning it had escaped, and I never 

 saw it again. 



The usual flight of the Bittern is slow and heavy, perfectly 

 noiseless, and in the daytime seldom sustained to any great 

 distance. I had once, though not in Sussex, a good oppor- 

 tunity of observing this, as I one morning flushed no less 

 than eight, in a very boggy and sedgy fen. They were all 

 perfectly mute, though it has been said that, when flushed. 



