° 1911 J Brewster, Nuptial Plumes of Bitterns. 97 



yards of one another, sometimes two hundred to three hundred 

 yards apart. Whenever they approached one another they acted 

 like the two seen on the 17th and 18th, crawling or gliding about 

 over the meadow and showing their ruffs more or less constantly and 

 conspicuously. One appeared to have small, yellowish ruffs, the 

 other large, pure white ones. I tried in vain to get a shot at them. 

 It was simply impossible to stalk them for there was no cover of 

 any kind and they would not permit me to approach them nearer 

 than one hundred yards before taking wing. They never once 

 attempted to hide but merely stood looking at me until they 

 thought I was getting dangerously close when they would fly to a 

 distant part of the meadow, returnimg to their original stations 

 whenever I went back to my canoe. 



Among the members of the Nuttall Club present at the meeting 

 when I gave an account of some of the observations above de- 

 scribed was my friend and neighbor Mr. Charles R. Lamb. Shortly 

 afterwards he visited Cape Cod to obtain a few shore birds for his 

 collection. During this trip he had an opportunity of seeing a 

 Bittern display its white ruffs and of examining them just after 

 the bird was killed. He has since been kind enough to place at 

 my disposal his written notes relating to this experience. Their 

 testimony is, in part, as follows : — 



"Late in the afternoon" of May 27, 1910, Mr. Lamb was sitting 

 in a shooting stand in a marsh at East Orleans, Massachusetts, 

 when he noticed a Bittern "about 100 to 150 yards" away, "stand- 

 ing very erect, with bill pointed up, looking like a stick." Shortly 

 after this it "lowered the feathers of the neck, bent the neck a 

 little and started to walk off, at the same time throwing out the 

 white feathers at the shoulder, over the wing. These feathers 

 stood out straight from the body at first, then seemed to extend 

 backward," being "apparently all white" and forming "a con- 

 spicuous wing-shaped thing on the back above the wing, which 

 looked about the size of" one's "hand, possibly not quite as long." 

 As no other Bittern was in sight Mr. Lamb "could see no reason 

 for the display of the white feathers unless it was due" to appre- 

 hension or alarm caused by his own presence. After watching 

 the bird for several minutes he approached it by crawling on 

 hands and knees through the grass and shot it, just as it took wing. 



