64 NOTES ON NEW ENGLAND BIRDS 



not tell if it were further or nearer than that. When 

 I got within half a dozen rods of the brook, it ceased, 

 and I heard it no more. I suppose that I scared it. As 

 before I was further off than I thought, so now I was 

 nearer than I thought. It is not easy to understand 

 how so small a creature can make so loud a sound by 

 merely sucking in or throwing out water with pump- 

 like lungs. 1 



It was a sound as of gulping water. 



Sept. 20, 1851. I scare up the great bittern in 

 meadow by the Heywood Brook near the ivy. He rises 

 buoyantly as he flies against the wind, and sweeps south 

 over the willow with outstretched neck, surveying. 



Oct. 5, 1851. The American bittern (Ardea minor) 2 

 flew across the river, trailing his legs in the water, 

 scared up by us. This, according to Peabody, 8 is the 

 boomer (stake-driver). In their sluggish flight they 

 can hardly keep their legs up. Wonder if they can 

 soar. 



Oct. 7, 1851. Saw the Ardea minor walking along 

 the shore, like a hen with long green legs. Its pencilled 

 throat is so like the reeds and shore, amid which it 

 holds its head erect to watch the passer, that it is diffi- 



1 [No water is nsed in producing the sound. Thoreau had been mis- 

 informed by one of his neighbors. See the account in his paper on the 

 " Natural History of Massachusetts " in Excursions. For an interesting 

 account of this habit of the bittern's see Mr. Bradford Torrey's paper 

 on " The ' Booming ' of the Bittern " in The Auk for January, 1889 

 ("vol. vi, pp. 1-8).] 



2 [Now called Botaurus lentiginosus.] 



8 [W. B. O. Peabody, Report on the Birds of Massachusetts.] 



