COMMON BITTERN. 



167 



As Mr. Lubbock remarks, the known instances of 

 either nests or young of this bird having been found are 

 somewhat rare, but to those cited in his " Fauna " may 

 be added the notice by Messrs. Gurney and Fisher of a 

 young bird* taken by Mr. D. B. Preston many years ago, 

 together with an addled egg, from a nest at Ranworth, 

 a broad specially mentioned by Messrs. Paget as a 

 breeding haunt of the bittern, and where, according to 

 the late Mr. Girdlestone's notes, a bittern was once shot 

 on the llth of May, in the act of feeding her young. 

 Mr. A. Newton is in possession of a bittern's egg, 

 obtained from Mr. E. S. Preston, who assured him 

 that it came from the collection of the late Mr. John 

 Smith, of Yarmouth, and that it was taken at Horsey, 

 in 1841. f A very interesting account also of a young 

 Norfolk bittern, from the pen of Mr. Jecks, of Thorpe, 

 near Norwich, is published in a small work by the Rev. 

 E. S. Dixon, formerly of Cringleford, on "the Dove- 

 cote and Aviary. J This bird, was picked up alive by 

 a wherryman, in some marshes near Yarmouth, about 

 the year 1845, and was in an unfledged state. It 

 was extremely shy at first and refused all food, but 

 eventually took kindly to a fish diet, and when once 

 settled in its new home became very pugnacious, and 

 would snap its beak viciously at all visitors, but proved 

 an arrant coward when resolutely approached. It would 

 eat fish and small birds, swallowing the latter whole 



* See " Zoologist " for 1846, p. 1321, where a figure of this 

 young bittern is given in Messrs. Gurney and Fisher's paper on 

 the "Birds of Norfolk." 



t Mr. A. Newton has also another British bittern's egg, which 

 formerly belonged to Mr. J. Wolley. This was taken with three 

 others in 1849 or 1850, on the borders of a reservoir, near Tring, 

 Hertfordshire. 



I " The Dovecote and Aviary," by the Eev. E. S. Dixon, M.A., 

 London, 1851. 



