HERONS AND BITTERNS 



(Family Ardeidce) 



American Bittern 



(Botaurus lentiginosus) 



Called also: MARSH HEN; INDIAN HEN; STAKE DRIVER; 

 POKE; FRECKLED HERON; BOG BULL; NIGHT HEN; 

 BOOMING BITTERN; LOOK-UP 



Length Varies from 24 to 34 inches. 



Male and Female Subcrested; upper parts freckled with shades 

 of brown, blackish, buff, and whitish; top of head and back 

 of neck slate color, with a yellow-brown wash; a black 

 streak on sides of neck; chin and throat white, with a few 

 brown streaks; under parts pale buff, striped with brown; 

 head flat. Bill yellow, and rather stout, and sharply pointed; 

 tail small and rounded ; legs long and olive colored. 



Range Temperate North America; nests usually north of Vir- 

 ginia, and winters from that state southward to the West 

 Indies. 



Season Summer resident, or visitor from May to October; per- 

 manent in the south. 



The booming bittern, whose " barbaric yawp " echoes from 

 lonely marshes, grassy meadows, and swamps through the sum- 

 mer, enjoys greater popularity in name than in deed ; for he is a 

 hermit, a shy, solitary wanderer, that even Thoreau, no less 

 secluded than he, knew by his voice chiefly. "Many have 

 heard the stake driver," says Hamilton Gibson, "but who shall 

 locate the stake?" The same bird whose voice sounds like 

 a stake being driven into a bog, or, again, "like the working 

 of an old-fashioned wooden pump," or like the hoarse crowing 

 of a raven when it flies at night, has for its love song the most 

 dismal, hollow bellow, that comes booming from the marshes at 

 evening, a mile away, with a gruesome solemnity. One of these 



