332 



msioRV OS 



L'hiefly heard from the beginning of spring to the end of autumn 

 and, however awful they may seem to us, are the calls to court- 

 ship, or of connubial felicity. 



From the loudness and solemnity of the note, many have been 

 led to suppose, that the bird made use of external instruments to 

 produce it, and that so small a body could never eject such a 

 quantity of tone. The common people are of opinion, that it 

 thrusts its bill into a reed, that serves as a pipe for swelling the 

 note above its natural pitch ; while others, and in this number 

 we find Thomson the poet, imagine that the bittern puts its 

 head under water, and then violently blowing produces its boom- 

 ings. The fact is, that the bird is sufficiently provided by na- 

 ture for this call ; and it is often heard where there are neither 

 reeds nor waters to assist its sonorous invitations. 



It hides in the sedges by day, and begins its call in the even- 

 ing, booming six or eight times, and then discontinuing for ten 

 or twenty minutes, to renew the same sound. This is a call it 

 never gives but when undisturbed, and at liberty. When its 

 retreats among the sedges are invaded, when it dreads or expects 

 the approach of an enemy, it is then perfectly silent. This call 

 it has never been heard to utter when taken or brought up in 

 domestic captivity ; it continues under the control of man a 

 mute forlorn bird, equally incapable of attachment or instruc- 

 tion. But though its boomings are always performed in soli- 

 tude, it has a scream which is generally heard upon the seizing 

 its prey, and which is sometimes extorted by fear. 



This bird, though of the heron kind, is yet neither so de- 

 structive nor so voracious. It is a retired timorous animal, con- 

 cealing itself in the midst of reeds and marshy places, and living 

 upon frogs, insects, and vegetables ; and though so nearly re- 

 sembling the heron in figure, yet differing much in manners and 

 appetites. As the heron builds on the tops of the highest trees, 

 the bittern lays its nest in a sedgy margin, or amidst a tuft of 

 rushes. The heron builds with sticks and wool ; the bittern 

 composes its simpler habitation of sedges, the leaves of water- 

 plants, and dry rushes. The heron lays four eggs ; the bittern 

 generally seven or eighty of an ash -green colour. The heron 

 feeds its young for many days ; the bittern in three days leads its 

 little ones to their food. In short, the heron is lean and cadaver- 

 ous, subsisting chiefly upon anirnal food; the bittern is plump 



