452 AMERICAN BITTERN. 



AMEEICAN BITTERN. {Ardea minor.) 



PLATE LXV.— Fig. 3. 



Le Butor de la Baye de Hudson, Briss. v. p. 449, 25. — Buff. vii. p. 430. — 

 Edw. 136. — Lath. Syn. iii. p. 58. — Beetle's Museum, No. 3727. 



BOTAURUS MINOR— Bonaparte. 

 Ardea minor, Bonap. Synop. p. 307. — Ardea Mokoho, Wagl. Syst. Av. No. 29. 



This is another nocturnal species, common to all our sea and 

 river marshes, though nowhere numerous. It rests all day 

 among the reeds and rushes, and, unless disturbed, flies and 

 feeds only during the night. 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 imitative 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 utters, 

 at times, a hollow guttural note among the reeds, but has 

 nothing of that loud booming sound for which the European 

 bittern is so remarkable. This circumstance, with its great 

 inferiority of size and difference of marking, sufficiently prove 

 them to be two distinct species, 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 Java, and 

 are then easily shot down, as they fly heavily. Like other 

 night birds, their sight is most acute during the evening twi- 

 light ; 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 



