THE LEAST BITTERN 65 



Bay ; but it must be confessed that a desire to secure 

 specimens of this, to me, strange bird left no oi)por- 

 tiinity to study its habits, and the species was not 

 again observed iintil June, 1898, in the northern 

 part of Cayuga County, New York. Here, under 

 the guidance of an observing local ornithologist, 

 Mr. E. G. Tabor, an encounter was had with a Least 

 Bittern which made a unique page in my experience 

 as a bird student. 



It was on the border of Otter Lake, where the 

 Least Bitterns nest in small numbers in low bushes, 

 or a mass of drift, or more often in the fringe of cat- 

 tails. The trail of a boat through the reeds and 

 empty nests, which before had held from three to 

 iive eggs, marked the ill-directed work of the boy 

 oologists whose misspent zeal has resulted in such 

 a vast accumulation of eggshells and such an ab- 

 sence of information about the birds that laid them. 

 A visit to a more distant part of the lake, where 

 even thus early in the year the cat-tails were five 

 feet above water of over half that depth, saved the 

 day, as far as Least Bitterns were concerned. Pad- 

 dling close to the reeds, a practiced eye could dis- 

 tinguish the site of a Bittern's nest, when the nest 

 itself was invisible, by the bowed tips of the reeds 

 which the bird invariably bends over it,'^^ The object 

 of this habit is perhaps to aid in concealing the eggs 

 from an enemy passing overhead — a Crow, for exam- 

 ple — an attack by boat evidently not being taken 

 into consideration. 



Certainly our appearance was in the nature 

 of a surprise to a pair of birds who had just 

 completed their jjlatformlike nest and were appar- 



