ii6 BIRDS OF THE DISTRICT OF GEELONG 
could hardly be mistaken for any other bird, should 
the bird-lover be favoured with a sight of it on a 
tramp through the marshy places which it frequents. 
Mr. J. F. Mulder has a specimen which his son 
caught with his hand, after some manoeuvring on 
his part, and not a little fight shown by the bird, 
in a clump of reeds near Lake Connewarre many years 
ago. Another example, also from Connewarre, I saw 
in a collection which was made by Mr. Neil Campbell's 
father. And that the species is not yet extinct was 
proved by Mr. Riordan on November 3rd, 191 2, 
when he flushed a single bird from a patch of bulrush 
just below the Gut. The Little Bittern never leaves 
the recesses of these tangled reed-beds unless disturbed 
into a short flight to another similar position. 
Its eggs are pure white ; I have one which was 
taken by Mr. H. G. Evered near Mathoura, N.S.W. 
The nests he found were open structures built between 
reeds standing in the water of a swamp, and were 
composed of water-plants and grasses heaped up. 
BITTERN 
Botaurus poiciloptilus poiciloptilus 
Always there has been some flavour of mystery 
about the Bittern, whose unearthly booming call, 
proceeding as it seemed from the depths of the lonely 
swamp, gave rise in the minds of the blacks (and 
others) to a more or less fixed belief in the existence 
of the bunyip, half animal, half evil spirit. It is 
