
Tez BITTERNS. 
food, for frogs and snails and snakes and mice, all prime 
delicacies with our hermit, abound there, and, with an occa- 
sional minnow, supply all his wants. And yet his safety is 
not perfect, for the prying naturalist, for whom mud and 
water have no terrors, sometimes comes across his home and 
family; and the wanton gunner, starting him up from his 
fishing and frogging, never spares him, but shoots him at 
sight; and what man, with an arm and a leg broken and 
body pierced with a dozen bullets will make as good a fight 
as does our bird when the destroyer goes to pick him up? 
As long as life is in his wrangled body, he never ceases to 
lunge and thrust at his murderer's eyes with his spear-like 
bill, scorning to yield to either pain or fear. 
He comes to us from Mexico, Central America, and the 
West Indies (the European species winters in Africa) early 
in the spring (I bought one, freshly killed, in the latter part 
of March, 1868, though that was very early indeed), and 
probably takes up his beds in the same swamp which last 
year he frequented. The "tinkle of the sheep bell" does 
not banish the bold bird; he and his mate live in their five 
or ten acres the whole summer through, although just out- 
side their bushy quagmire the white-shirted haymakers may ` 
whet their seythes and shout to their horses, and the loco- 
motive with his thundering train may go tearing by almost 
every hour in the day. It seems that the raven avoids the 
bittern's domains, because he don't like the "reek o' the rot- 
ten fen." Very well, let him stay away if he likes, the beau- 
tiful yellow-throats and swamp-sparrows, and, if there is 2 
rotten stump, the chickadees, make his place good and more 
than good. With their company and with surroundings of - 
burple-liossomed Kalmia, glossy-leaved Smilax and pink 
Calopogon, quiet cedars, nodding sedges, and rustling 
res Old Sooty's absence will be little mourned. 
me speak of finding the bittern breeding in colonies in 
. trees. Good observers say so, and I beliéke them; but I 
think that all such cases are owing to accidental circum- 




