276 AMERICAN GAME, 
the marshes, and there lays its eggs and rears its black 
downy young; but several years ago, while residing at 
Bangor, in Maine, while on a visit to a neighboring 
heronry, situated on an island covered with a dense 
forest of tall pines and hemlocks, I observed a pair of 
Bitterns flying to and fro, from the tree-tops to the river 
and back, with fish in their bills, among the herons 
which were similarly engaged in the same interesting 
occupation of feeding their young. One of these, the 
male bird, I shot, for the purpose of settling the fact, 
and we afterward harried the nest, and obtained two 
full-grown young birds, almost ready to fly. 
Hence, I presume, that, like many other varieties of 
birds, the Bittern adapts his habits, even of nidification, 
to the purposes of the case, and that where no trees are 
to be found, in which he can breed, he makes the best he 
can of it, and builds on the ground ; butit is my opinion - 
that his more usual and preferred situation for his nest is | 
in high trees, as is the case with his congeners, the Green 
Bittern, the blue heron, the beautiful white egret, the 
night heron, which may be all found breeding together 
in hundreds among the red cedars on the sea beach of 
Cape May. The nest, which I found in Maine, was 
built of sticks, precisely similar to that of the herons. 
The Bittern is a more nocturnal bird than the heron, 
and is never seen, like him, standing motionless as a gray 
stone, with his long slender neck recurved, his javelin- 
