ARDETTA STAGNATILIS, Gould. 
Little Grey Bittern. 
Ardetta stagnatilis, Gould in Proc. of Zool. Soc., November 1847. 
Wor-gorl, Aborigines of Port Essington. 
Little Grey Bittern, of the Colonists. 
This bird is tolerably abundant at Port Essington and other parts of tbe north coast of Australia, where 
its favourite haunts are small islets covered with mangroves and low swampy points of land running out 
into the sea ; its chief place of resort, however, is the dense beds of mangroves, beneath the shade of which 
it runs about in search of food, of which there is a great variety, such as fish, crustaceans, and numerous 
marine worms and insects : when the tide rises and the muddy beds and roots of the mangroves are 
covered with water, the bird betakes itself to the higher branches, where it sits motionless until the tide 
retires and leaves behind a frevsh supply of food. 
Although generally speaking it is a solitary species, yet at times it congregates in considerable numbers. 
Mr. Gilbert found a colony breeding on two small islets in Coral Bay, near the entrance of the harbour of 
Port Essington. Their nests, about thirty in number, were built both on the mangroves and on the branches 
of the yellow-blossomed Hibiscus \ they were very frail structures, consisting of a few small twigs placed 
across each other on the horizontal branches, and none of them were more than six feet from the ground ; 
each contained either two young birds, or two eggs of a uniform very pale green, one inch and five-eighths 
long by one inch and a quarter broad. 
Crown of the head, occipital crest and a small tuft beneath each eye black ; neck and all the under sur- 
face grey, with a vinous tinge, which becomes much deeper on the abdomen and under tail-coverts ; 
lengthened feathers of the baek bluish grey with lighter shafts ; wing-coverts dark slate-grey, narrowly mar- 
gined with buff and white ; remainder of the wings and tail dark grey ; irides light yellow ; orhits and eye- 
lash gamboge-yellow ; upper mandible and cutting edge of the lower mandible very dark reddish brown ; 
remainder of the lower mandible oil-green ; tibiae and hinder part of the tarsi bright yellow ; remainder of 
the legs and feet yellowish brown. 
The young differ in having all the upper surface brown, with a triangular spot of white at the tip of all 
the wing-feathers, and the throat broadly and conspicuously striated with brown on a white ground. 
The figures represent a male and a female of the natural size. 
