A SWEET LOVE SONG. 
155 
heeded, if you keep the line of the rushes, for a thick tuft of these 
sturdy phints makes a safe foot- fall in any bog. You may now, per- 
haps, start the Twite, which will utter its peevish chirp, and jerk off ; 
and if there be a stream with banks of some consistency, you may 
see the more lively Wagtail, which wiU jerk and run, and flirt about, 
as if showing oif for your especial amusement. Should there be a 
wide portion of clear water, you may perhaps see the Wild Duck 
with her young brood sailing out from among the reeds, like a vessel 
of war leading the fleet which she protects ; or if the pool is smaller, 
you may see the brown and yellow of the Snipe gliding through tho 
herbage on the margin, as if it were a snake in the grass. Not a 
wing will stir, however, or a creative take much heed of your presence, 
after the Lapwing wails her farewell. 
In the tuft of tall and close herbage, not very far from the firm 
ground, but yet so placed near or in the water that you cannot very 
easily reach it, the Bittern may be close at the time, wakeful, noting 
you well, and holding herself prepared to ' keep her castle but you 
cannot raise her by shouting, or even by throwing stones, the last of 
which is treason against nature, in a place solely under Nature's 
dominion. Wait till the sun is down, and the last glimmer of the 
twilight has got westward of the zenith, and then retiirn to the place 
where you expected to find the bird. 
The reeds begin to rustle with the little winds, in which the day 
settles accounts with the night ; but there is a shorter and a sharper 
rustle, accompanied by the brush of rather a powerful wing. You 
look round the dim horizon, but there is no bird : another rustle of 
the wing, and another, still weaker and weaker, but not a moving 
thing between you and the sky around. You feel rather disappointed 
■ — foolish, if you are daring ; fearful, if you are timid. On, on, a 
burst of uncouth and savage laughter breaks over you, piercingly, or 
rather gratingly loud, and so unwonted and odd, that it sounds as if 
the voices of a bull and horse were combined, the former breaking 
down his bellow to suit the neigh of the latter, in mocking you from 
the sky. 
This is the love-song of the Bittern, with which he serenades his 
mate ; and uncouth and harsh as it sounds to you, that mate hears 
it far sooner than she would hear the sweetest chorus of the grove ; 
and when the surprise with which you are at first taken is over, you 
begin to discover that there is a sort of modulation in the singular 
sound. As the bird utters it he wheels in a spiral, expanding his 
voice as the loops widen, and sinking it as they close ; and though 
you can just dimly discover him between you and the zenith, it is 
worth while to lie down on your back, and wa^tch the style of his 
flight, which is as fine as it is peculiar. The sound comes better 
out, too, when you are in that position ; and there is an echo, and, 
as you would readily imagine, a shaking of the ground ; not that, 
according to the tale of the poets, the bird thrusts his bill into the 
marsh, and shakes that with his booming, though (familiar as I once 
