132 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



43. Botaurus lentiginosus (Montag.). 

 American Bittern. 



Common transient visitor in spring and autumn ; also breeding in a few localities. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



March 31, 1894, one seen, Cambridge Region, W. Faxon. 



April 1 5 — October 20. 

 November 26, 1874, one taken, Belmont, W. Brewster. 



NESTING DATES. 



May s — 20. 



Nuttall, writing of the Bittern in 1834,1 says: "In the breeding season, 

 and throughout a great part of the summer, we often hear the loud booming 

 note of this bird from the marshes of Fresh Pond." Mr. J. Elliot Cabot 

 also mentions 2 the booming of the Bittern in terms which indicate that it 

 must have been one of the characteristic spring sounds of this locality in his col- 

 lege days. It was never heard in Cambridge, so far as I am aware, between 

 1865 and 1894, although during this period the birds occurred commonly 

 enough at their seasons of migration. Since 1895, however, the Bittern has 

 been a regular summer resident of the Fresh Pond Marshes, and its nest and 

 eggs have been repeatedly found in the beds of cattail flags immediately to the 

 north and west of the Glacialis. For several years after its reappearance only a 

 single pair was noted each summer, but in 1902, as I am informed by Mr. Rich- 

 ard S. Eustis, two if not three males were repeatedly heard pumping at the same 

 time. It is difificult to account for the absence of the birds from this ancestral 

 breeding ground during the years above mentioned, but their return to it in 1895 

 was probably due largely, if not wholly, to the increase and dispersion of the cat- 

 tail flags which had taken place only a short time before. There is no evidence, 

 however, that these flags were more numerous at the time referred to by Nut- 

 tall than they were during the earlier years of my own experience, when they 

 occurred only in scattered patches along the banks of Little River and about a 

 few of the pools in the Brickyard Swamp. 



IT. Nuttall, Manual of the Ornithology of the United States and of Canada. The Water Birds, 

 1834, 61. 



2 J. E. Cabot, Sedge-birds, Atlantic Monthly, XXIII, 1869, 385. 



