604 



BITTERN. 



others in places where there are no trees, or even 

 stumps upon which a bird can perch. It does not 

 appear however that the birds builds 011 trees$ or 

 that it even rests on their tops like the heron. The 

 nest is said to be in the cover of a bush or tuft, and 

 rudely formed of the dry leaves of the aquatic plants. 

 The eggs of the same number us in the common 

 bittern, but nearly white in the colour. 



The AMERICAN BITTERN (Sotaurus lentiginosus). 

 This species is a native of America, over the north- 

 ern part of which continent it is pretty generally 

 distributed. In form and in the general tint of its 

 plumage, it bears no inconsiderable resemblance to 

 the common bittern ; but the spots and markings of 

 dark colour are much more minute and thickly 

 spread, on which account it gets the epithet " lentigi- 

 nosus" or " freckled." This species is said not to 

 ascend and boom in the pairing season, in the same 

 manner as the common bittern ; but it makes a hol- 

 low drumming noise when it is disturbed. 



On the continent of America, this species is very 

 migratory. Indeed, from the intense cold of the 

 winter, even in latitudes which are not very high, 

 the great range of country, the abundance of water, 

 and the warmth of those countries which border on 

 the Gulf of Mexico, and which are at the same time 

 very humid, abundant in cover, and in the food of 

 all sorts of birds, but more especially aquatic and 

 forest ones, and which are even at this time very 

 partially cleared and very thinly inhabited, birds are 

 far more migratory, and far more numerous on their 

 migrations, than on any part of the eastern continent. 

 From the moors of north-eastern Russia to Egypt is 

 the only portion of the eastern continent, in which 

 there is a migratory range from the one extreme to 

 the other, without being actually interrupted by 

 mountains ; and even there, the path lies for great 

 part of the way upon the sea, and the mountains 

 approach so near on each side as to leave only a 

 comparatively narrow gorge, while Egypt, as a water 

 bird's country, though rich for its extent, is only a 

 broad stripe seaming the desert. In America there 

 is no such interruption ; but from the swamps of 

 Florida and Lower Louisiana, northward to the 

 utmost extreme where a bird can find food, there is 

 free range, abundant food, and congenial resting place 

 for every way-farer on the wing. This ample scope, 

 by means of which the seasonal action of nature plays 

 freely from the polar to the tropical sea, is one of 

 the causes of that great diversity of seasons, which 

 renders it necessary that birds which live on the 

 margins of the waters, and yet are inland and not 

 shore birds, should move to the southward in the 

 winter. But the very same structure of the surface 

 which imposes this necessity upon the birds, finds 

 them accommodation, and nearly equal accommoda- 

 tion, at every latitude of this wide range, so that they 

 can shorten their journeys if the season is mild, or 

 lengthen them if it is severe. On their northward 

 journeys there is little chance of these birds ranging 

 across the Atlantic to Britain j because at that time 

 the southern part of the great central valley of Ame- 

 rica is warm, and the northern part cola, and the 

 high flying birds get above the southward current of 

 air, which sets near the surface of the ground, and 

 float easily upon the upper or return one from the 

 south, which at some elevation is the prevailing 

 wind in the valley of the Mississippi, just as the 

 south-west wind is, from the same cause and at the 



same season and height, the prevailing wind with us, 

 even when the surface wind blows steady from the 

 north-east. 



It is riot probable that the same individual birds, 

 of the freckled bitterns or any other species, range 

 the whole length of this vast district, which from the 

 Gulf to about the middle latitude of Hudson's Bay is 

 about two thousand miles. We must suppose that the 

 water birds at all times inhabit a very considerable por- 

 tion of the length, more especially the bitterns, which 

 are at all times solitary birds, and do not flock even 

 upon their migrations, as is the case with many species 

 which dwell apart when they take up their seasonal 

 abode. The species under consideration appears on 

 the swamps near Hudson's Bay in the beginning of 

 summer, and breeds there ; but as it is a retiring 

 bird, and as those swamps are not very accessible 

 till they are frozen, before which time the birds have 

 of course removed to the southward, compara- 

 tively little is known either of their numbers or their 

 habits. 



Besides the three species of which some notice 

 has been given, there are others that have been 

 described either as bitterns, or confounded with them 

 in the melange of the old genus Ardea. The three 

 which have been mentioned are, however, the only 

 ones of which the history is sufficiently made out for 

 popular purposes. As bitterns their story is soon 

 told, being in all the three little else than a repetition 

 of that of our native one. But as they are very pre- 

 eminently birds of wild nature, the 'study of them in 

 all the different habits of the species, is important, as 

 they are in some sort keys, not only to the ornitho- 

 logy, but to the general state of nature in those 

 places where they are found. We find the common 

 one migrating but little, dwelling pretty generally 

 over the globe, but only in very peculiar spots, and 

 incapable of bearing much change in their physical 

 character, by whatever cause that change may be 

 brought about. We have the second much more dis- 

 cursive, not so resolute a feeder in the rough herbage, 

 or so determined a dweller in the wild and. lonely 

 marshes only. It has a seasonal migration from east 

 to west and back again, along the central part of the 

 old continent ; though to the eastward of the Cas- 

 pian, it is probable that its motions are reversed in 

 time as compared with those to the westward. In 

 the last mentioned species again we have a migration 

 nearly upon the meridian, in a bird which resem- 

 bles more the first, or least migratory sgecies, in its 

 habits. But we have also seen that the country in 

 which this last one takes its seasonal flights, is one 

 remarkably well adapted for the support of birds of 

 this tribe ; and that, with the exception of being 

 stationary in the same place from the time that the 

 nest is begun till the young are able to shift for them- 

 selves, which takes place at the most northerly part 

 of the annual movement, or when the twilights are 

 longest and the food most abounds, and is more easily 

 obtained, the movement for the rest of the year is 

 a gradual shifting from day to day, without any 

 necessity for those long and laborious flights which 

 the migrant birds that in general visit our shores are 

 obliged to take across the sea. Many inferences 

 from the hints which have been thrown out in the 

 course of this article will suggest themselves to the 

 reader : among others, that the migration of birds is 

 not that mysterious matter which some have asserted, 

 but that it is varied as much by natural circumstances, 



