ARDETTA.. 255 



Iii size the eggs vary a good deal, from 1-2 to 1'42 in length, 

 and from 1 to 1*1 in breadth, but the average of twenty-three 

 eggs is 1-31 nearly by T04. 



Ardetta sinensis (Gmel.). The Little Yellow Bittern. 

 Ardetta sinensis (Gm.), Jerd. B. Ind. ii, p. 755; Hume, Cat. no. 934. 



The late Mr. Valentine Irwin sent me an egg of this species 

 from Comillah, Tipperah, and wrote : " I have got a nest of the 

 Yellow Bittern. On the 28th June I was searching some rush 

 and reed at the edge of a tank, about two miles distant from here, 

 for Bails' and Water-cocks' eggs. I found one or two common 

 nests, but got tired and came out on the bank, and I was just 

 changing my boots &c., when my shikaree called out from a clump 

 of rush, which I had only left a couple of minutes previously, that 

 there was a Paddy-bird on her nest. I went in as I was, no 

 trousers, no boots, and there, sure enough, doubled into the 

 smallest imaginable space, was a Yellow Bittern on a little rush- 

 and-reed nest built on the top of a small mud pillar, which 

 projected about 6 inches above the water-level, and which was 

 entirely surrounded by a dense growth of that round sedge Snipe 

 so affect in the cold weather. I stood within two feet of her, but 

 she did not fly off till I put out my hand to seize her, and then she 

 flapped off, uttering a queer little chuckling, chattering note, and 

 settled on the top of a net stake about twenty-five yards off. The 

 nest contained five dull, dingy, white eggs : three of them were 

 already cracked, the other two I took, and, as soon as we had got 

 about twenty feet away from the nest, the old bird, which had 

 never ceased croaking and squacketting, flopped back on to the 

 nest and immediately became as still as a mouse. The eggs were 

 just like those of the Chestnut Bittern, but rather smaller and 

 rounder I think. I broke one egg in trying to extract the young ; 

 the other, wreck as it is, 1 send." 



Colonel Butler writes : " I found two or three pairs of the 

 Yellow Bittern at Milana, 18 miles south-east of Deesa, during the 

 rains, breeding in a dense bed of tall bulrushes by the side of a 

 small tank. They are not easily flushed, and when flushed they 

 fly somewhat rapidly along the top of the rushes, dropping into 

 the reeds again after a short flight. The following extract is 

 taken from my nesting memoranda : ' On the 21st August, 1876, 

 at Milana, I found a nest of the Yellow Bittern. It was built of 

 sedge and rushes near the outside of an immense bed of tall bul- 

 rushes, in one of which it was placed about two feet above the 

 level of the water. It was a small nest and not unlike that of a 

 small Eail, and contained three eggs, but unfortunately so near 

 hatching that I only managed to extract the contents of one of 

 them. The eggs are long and cylindrical, in fact, much in shape 

 like Nightjar's eggs, about 1^ inch in length, and white, faintly 

 tinted with pale skim-milk blue.' I think there can be no doubt 



