228 VERTEBRATE FAUNA OF LAKELAND 



the contrary, the name is entirely absent from the Howard House- 

 hold Book, in which the Bittern is uniformly styled the 'Bitter' on 

 the few occasions upon which it is mentioned at all. Scanty as 

 the information gleaned from this source must be admitted to 

 be, its value is augmented by the season of the year at which it 

 proves that Bitterns were occasionally obtained. The birds 

 purchased for the Na worth table during the first week of August 

 1618, included ' 36 mallards, iijs., 2 bitters and a curlue, xxijd.' 

 Among the fowl brought in on the first of August 1634 (and 

 therefore procured in the month of July), we read of ' one duck, 

 vjd., one litter, vjd., and two plovers, iiijd.' 



Most unfortunately the eighteenth century is almost a blank 

 as regards information regarding the Bitterns which still 

 lingered on our mires. Eichardson was the first to break 

 silence, and even he was content to say that this bird ' some- 

 times, though rarely, breeds by the side of Eamont, on the low 

 grounds ' — i.e. on such a moss as Honipot, which is still adapted 

 to its habits. Dr. Heysham three years later added this note : 

 ' The Bittern is not so numerous as the Heron, and is always 

 solitary. It breeds in bogs and makes its nest upon the ground. 

 In the spring it makes a loud bellowing kind of noise, from 

 which it is called in Cumberland Miredrum.' This allusion to 

 the cry of the Bittern is borne out by a remark of the late Mr. 

 W. Dickinson, who says in his glossary : ' Bitter-bump, Mire- 

 drum, c. the bittern. This bird is now a very rare visitor [1878], 

 and is not known to breed here. The writer has a recollection 

 of being called to listen to the booming of a bittern in a mild 

 spring evening, about the year 1804, in the mosses of Arlecdon.' 1 

 The Eev. R. Wood informs me that his late father, long the 

 vicar of Westward, remembered the Bittern as frequenting 

 Cardew Mire, where it was supposed to breed. He was born in 

 1796, and might therefore have heard the Bittern's cry when a 

 boy, as well as his contemporary, Mr. Dickinson. It is therefore 

 quite possible that Dr. Heysham, who came to Carlisle in 1778, 

 had a personal knowledge of the Bittern in the Lake district. 

 But if a stray Bittern lingered among our bogs and flows during 

 the early summers of the present century, the energy of the 

 1 Cumberland Glossary, pp. 7, 8. 



