90 Brewster, Nuptial Plumes of Bitterns. [jan. 



CONCERNING THE NUPTIAL PLUMES WORN BY 



CERTAIN BITTERNS AND THE MANNER IN 



WHICH THEY ARE DISPLAYED. 



BY WILLIAM BREWSTER. 



Chief among the natural attractions of Concord, Massachusetts, 

 is its charming little river, known as the Sudbury above the point 

 where, near the village center, it unites with the Assabet, and 

 below this as the Concord. The Indians called it the Musketequid 

 or Grass-grown River, a name not less appropriate than euphoni- 

 ous, for its sluggish waters abound in aquatic or semi-aquatic 

 vegetation and its banks are fringed with wild grasses and sedges 

 which stretch for miles along one or both sides of the placid, sinuous 

 stream and in places also extend back to a greater or less distance 

 over low, flat lands wet at all seasons and regularly inundated in 

 early spring. These fresh-water marshes are of vast extent in 

 Sudbury and Wayland and they cover hundreds of acres in the 

 eastern part of Concord where they have been known, ever since 

 the first settlement of the town, as the Great Meadows and where 

 I am especially familiar with them for I am accustomed to spend 

 much time in spring and autumn at a camp on Ball's Hill that 

 directly overlooks them. Among the birds which frequent them 

 at these seasons and in summer, the American Bittern is one of 

 the commonest and most conspicuous as well as most interesting. 

 I have had so many opportunities of watching it here and elsewhere 

 that I had come to doubt if there could be anything more of im- 

 portance for me to learn regarding its life history when, only last 

 April, I was not a little surprised — and also a bit humiliated — 

 to find that during the mating season the male bird indulges in 

 certain odd and interesting displays of plumage of which I had 

 been wholly ignorant. The following account of this experience 

 is taken, with few changes, from my journal where I wrote it out 

 in full just after making the observations to which it relates. 



Concord, Massachusetts. April 17, 1910. Brilliantly clear 

 and bracingly cool with strong, keen east wind. 



The marsh on the south side of the river opposite Ball's Hill 





