THE LEAST BITTERN 63 
anything I had ever seen a bird do before, I mar- 
veled that his acrobatic powers had not made him 
famous. 
The feathered gymnast’s slender body—or per- 
haps one should say neck, for the bird is chiefly 
neck and head—seemed to be mounted on long stilts, 
with the aid of which he waded rapidly through the 
water, his head shooting in and out at each stride. 
The Least Bittern’s notes appear to be less known 
than his habits. Nuttall, that exceptionally keen- 
eared bird student, was familiar with them, but 
most writers have restricted themselves to the state- 
ment that, when flushed, the bird utters alow qua, 
while some have even said he was voiceless. 
I should not be in the least surprised to learn that 
this uncanny inhabitant of the reeds had a call fully 
as remarkable as the vocal performance of his large 
relative, the American Bittern, but thus far in my 
slight acquaintance with him he has been heard 
to utter only four notes: A soft, low coo, slowly 
repeated five or six times, and which is probably 
the love song of the male; an explosive alarm 
note, quoh ; a hissing hah, with which the bird 
threatens a disturber of its nest; and a low ftut-tut- 
tut, apparently a protest against the same kind of 
intrusion. 
It was the markedly dovelike coo which first in- 
troduced me to this species. With William Brew- 
ster I was at the Fresh Pond marshes, listening for 
the repetition of some strange calls which had ex- 
cited the curiosity of Cambridge ornithologists, and 
which proved to belong to a Florida Gallinule,* 
* See Brewster, Auk, vol. viii, 1891, p. 1. 
