AMERICAN BITTERN. 297 
son or year, will be found deserted by them the next. ‘That they mi- 
grate by night I have always felt assured, but that they are altogether 
nocturnal is rather uncertain, for in more than half a dozen instances 
I have surprised them in the act of procuring food in the middle of 
the day when the sun was shining brightly. That they are extremely 
timid I well know, for on several occasions, when I have suddenly come 
upon them, they have stood still from mere terror, until I have knocked 
them down with an oar or a stick. Yet, when wounded, and their 
courage is raised, they shew great willingness to defend themselves, and 
if in the presence of a dog, they never fail to spread out to their 
full extent the feathers of the neck, leaving its hind part bare, ruffle 
those of their body, extend their wings, and strike violently at their 
enemy. When seized they scratch furiously, and endeavour to bite, 
so that, unless great care be taken, they may inflict severe wounds. 
I never saw one of them fly farther than thirty or forty yards at a 
time ; and on such occasions, their movements were so sluggish as to 
give opportunities of easily shooting them; for they generally rise 
within a few yards of you, and fly off very slowly in a direct course. 
Their cries at such times greatly resemble those of the Night and 
Yellow-crowned. Herons. 
My friends, Dr Bacuman and Mr Norra tt, have both heard the 
love-notes of this bird. The former says, in a letter to me, “ their 
hoarse croakings, as if their throats were filled with water, were heard 
on every side ;” and the latter states that “instead of the bémp or 
boomp of the true Bittern, their call is something like the uncouth syl- 
lables of ’pump-at-gah, but uttered in the same low, bellowing tone.” 
Dr Bacuman procured, on the 29th April 1833, about forty miles 
from Charleston, individuals, in the ovaries of which he found eggs so 
large as to induce him to believe that they would have been laid in 
the course of a single week. Some others which were procured by him 
and myself within nine miles of Charleston, on the 29th of March, 
had the eggs extremely small. 
While at Passamaquody Bay, at the eastern extremity of the Uni- 
ted States, I was assured that this species bred in the vicinity ; but I 
saw none there, or in any of the numerous places examined on my way 
to Labrador and Newfoundland. In neither of these countries did I 
meet with a single person who was acquainted with it. 
In few other species of maritime or marsh birds have I seen so 
