Bitterns 



and slender, mere poles some of them, with a single nest where the branches 

 fork; while those more heavily limbed had four, five, and even six of the plat- 

 forms of sticks, which with Herons serve as nests; but in only a single instance 

 was one nest placed directly below another. A conservative estimate yielded a 

 total of five hundred and twenty-five nests, all within a circle about one hundred 

 yards in diameter, the lowest being about thirty feet from the ground, the high- 

 est at least eighty feet above it. On entering the rookery our attention was 

 attracted at once by the nearly grown Herons, who, old enough to leave the nest, 

 had climbed out on the adjoining limbs. There, silhouetted against the sky, 

 they crouched in family groups of two, three, and four. Other broods, inhab- 

 itants of more thickly leaved trees, made known their presence above by dis- 

 gorging a half-digested eel, which dropped with a thud at our feet. The vegeta- 

 tion beneath the well-populated trees was as white as though it had been liberally 

 daubed with whitewash, and the ground was strewn with blue-green egg-shells 

 neatly broken in two across the middle ; fish, principally eels, in various stages 

 of digestion and decay; and the bodies of young birds th^t had met with an 

 untimely death by falling from above. It 

 was not altogether a savory place. As the 

 sun crept upward and the last fishers re- 

 turned, the calls of both old and young birds 

 were heard less and less often, and by ten 

 o'clock night had fallen on the rookery and 

 the birds were all resting quietly. Four 

 o'clock in the afternoon was evidently early 

 morning, and at this hour the birds first 

 began to leave the rookery for their fishing 

 grounds." 



Bitterns. The only other members of 

 the group to be mentioned are the Bitterns, 

 which are distinguished at once by having 

 only ten tail-feathers and the middle toe with 

 its claw about equal to or greatly exceeding 

 the tarsus. Several genera have been de- 

 scribed, the most typical and important being 



Botaurus, 1 which embraces what may be called the true Bitterns. They are 

 small or medium-sized birds with a mottled plumage of buff, brown, and black; 

 the neck is shorter and thicker and the head proportionally larger than in the 

 Herons, and the head is without plumes. They haunt swamps and marshes, 

 where their striped dress harmonizes admirably with the rushes and reeds. 

 They are not at all gregarious, it being rare to find more than two in company 

 even in the nesting season. They feed on crustaceans, lizards, frogs, and in- 

 sects, and build a loose nest of grasses, etc., usually on the ground in marshes. 

 The eggs are from three to five, pale olive-buff or bluish white in color. 



FlG. 46. European Bittern, Botaurus 

 stellaris. 



1 By some systematists Botaurus is made to include several of the genera of other authors. 

 L 



