THE LEAST BITTERN 65 
Bay ; but it must be confessed that a desire to secure 
specimens of this, to me, strange bird left no oppor- 
tunity to study its habits, and the species was not 
again observed until 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 
five eggs, marked the ill-directed work of the boy 
odlogists 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 platformlike nest and were appar- 
6 
