AMERICAN BITTERN. 559 
In some places it is called the Indian Hen; on the sea-coast of New 
Jersey it is known by the name of dunkadoo, a word probably imita- 
tive of its common note. They are also found in the interior, having 
myself killed one at the inlet of the Seneca Lake, in October. It ut- 
ters, at times, a hollow, guttural note among the reeds, but has nothing 
of that loud, booming gound for which the European Bittern is so re- 
markable, "This circumstance, with its great inferiority of size, and 
difference of marking, sufficiently prove them to be two distinct spe- 
cies, although, hitherto, the present has been classed as a mere variety 
of the European Bittern. These birds, we are informed, visit Severn 
River, at Hudson’s Bay, about the beginning of June; make their 
nests in swamps, laying four cinereous green eggs among the long 
grass. The young are said to be, at first, black. 
These birds, when disturbed, rise with a hollow kaa, aa) are then 
easily shot down, as they fly heavily. Like other night birds, their 
sight is most acute during the evening twilight; but their hearing 
is, at all times, exquisite. 
The American Bittern is twenty-seven inches long, and three feet 
four inches in extent; from the point of the bill to the extremity of 
the toes, it measures three feet; the bill is four inches long; the up- 
per mandible black; the lower, greenish yellow; lores and eyelids, 
yellow; irides, bright yellow; upper part of the head, flat, and re- 
markably depressed ; the plumage there is of a deep blackish brown, 
long behind and on the neck, the general color of which is a yellowish 
brown, shaded with darker ; ‘this long plumage of the neck the bird 
can throw forward at will, ” when irritated, so as to:give him a more 
formidable appearance ; throat, whitish, streaked: with deep brown: 
from the posterior and lower part of the auriculars, a broad patch of 
deep black passes pane across the neck, a distinguished charac- 
teristic of this species; the back is deep brown, barred, and mottled 
with innumerable specks and streaks’ of brownish yellow; quills, 
black, with a leaden gloss, and tipped with yellowish brown ; legs and 
feet, yellow, tinged with pale green; middle claw, pectinated ; belly, 
light yellowish brown, streaked with darker ; 3 vent, plain; ‘thighs, 
sprinkled on the outside with grains of dark brown; male and female, 
nearly alike, the latter somewhat less. According to Bewick, the 
tail of the European Bittern. contains only ten feathers ; the American 
species has, invariably, twelve. The intestines measured five feet six 
inches in length, and were very little thicker than a common knitting 
needle; the stomach is usually filled with fish or frogs.* 
This bird, when fat, is considered by many to be excellent eating. 
* T have taken an entire Water-Rail from the stomach of the European Bittern. 
— Ep. 
