248 NEW YORK STATE MUSEUM 



eastern Long Island and on all the marshes of the interior. On the Mon- 

 tezuma marshes it is so common that a dozen birds may often be heard 

 booming at the same time. Some of the upland counties may possibly 

 be without breeding records for the bittern, but it seems to establish 

 itself wherever there are weedy marshes 10 or more acres in extent. I 

 have found it nesting at Elk lake within 10 miles of Mt Marcy, and it prob- 

 ably breeds in suitable localities throughout the Adirondack region when- 

 ever it is left undisturbed. 



Migration. The bittern arrives from the ist to the loth of April in 

 the southeastern part of New York, and from the loth to the 20th of April 

 in the western districts. On Long Island and in the interior the latest 

 dates are from the ist to the 15th of November. 



Habits. From the time of its first appearance in April well into the month 

 of June the booming of the bittern is one of the characteristic sounds of our 

 marshes. The popular impression exists that the notes are produced while 

 the bird's head is submerged, but such is not the case. On several occasions 

 I have sat on a slope overlooking an extensive marsh where a number of 

 bitterns were booming, and sometimes two or three could be seen at the 

 same time engaged in the curious performance. They were standing quite 

 motionless in the marsh, and every few minutes the desire to utter its love 

 notes seemed to take violent possession of some one of the birds. It would 

 stretch out its neck rather spasmodically, clicking its bill meanwhile three or 

 four times, and begin a sinuous or pumping motion with the neck and fore- 

 part of the body, similar to the actions of a hawk or owl when disgorging a 

 bone pellet, but with the head and bill inclined upward at an angle of 45 

 degrees or more. At each spasm or pumping motion the head and foreneck 

 would shoot forward some distance, and the wondrous notes would finally 

 come forth, resembling the syllables pump-er-lunk, or plum pudd'n, or, 

 as one observer expressed it to me, ugh plum pudd'n, repeated several times. 

 He certainly acts as if suffering from acute nausea, and the notes are fairly 

 disgorged by the love-sick bittern. The sound has a hollow gurgling 

 quality and has been compared to the sound of a wooden pump just as the 

 water is about to come forth, or to the muffled bellow of a bull. At the dis- 

 tance of half a mile it is reduced to one syllable and resembles the sound made 



