THE BITTERN. 275 



had been shot dead, uttering at the moment of each 

 dive x a loud quawk. While I was still engaged in 

 watching his manoeuvres, he was answered, and a 

 second Bittern came floating through the darksome air, 

 and joined his companion. Another and another fol- 

 lowed, and within ten or twelve minutes, there must 

 have been from fifteen to twenty of these large birds all 

 gamboling and disporting themselves together, circling 

 round one another in their gyratory flight, and making 

 the night any thing, certainly, but melodious by their 

 clamors. "What was the meaning of those strange noc- 

 turnal movements I cannot so much as guess ; it was not 

 early enough in the spring to be connected in any way 

 with the amatory propensities of the birds, or I should 

 have certainly set it down, like the peculiar flight, the 

 unusual chatter, and the drumming, performed with 

 the quill-feathers, of the American. Snipe Scolopax 

 Wilsonii commonly known as the English snipe, dur- 

 ing the breeding season, as a preliminary to incubation, 

 nidification, and the reproduction of the species in a 

 word, as a sort of bird courtship. The season of the 

 year put a stopper on that interpretation, and I can con- 

 ceive none other than that the QuawJcs were indulging 

 themselves in an innocent game of romps, preparatory 

 to the more serious and solemn enjoyment of a fish and 

 frog supper. 



The Bittern, it appears, on the Severn river, emptying 

 into Hudson's Bay, makes its nest in the long grass of 



