LIST OF NORFOLK BIRDS. 
419 
249. Little Littern {Ardetta minuta). 
Mr. Stevenson enumerates fourteen occurrences of the Little 
liittern. There can liardly be a doubt of its having formerly bred 
in our extensive marshes, and there is even strong presumptive 
evidence of its liaving done so in two instances of recent years. 
S.'M). iJiTTERN (Botaurus siellaris). 
Til is is another of the birds which drainage and enclosure have 
driven from their old haunts. Evidence of the former abundance 
of the Bittern in the Broads and Fens of Norfolk is plentiful 
enough. i\fr. Lubbock records that in 1819 he killed eleven 
Bitterns whilst Snipe shooting, without particularly looking for 
them, and that an aged keeper assured him in 1843, that when a 
boy, he has known a party “ fen-.shooting” at Downham to kill twenty 
or thirty Bitterns in one morning. The nesting of this bird was 
always more apparently rare than in reality, and so impenetrable 
was the situation chosen, that the eggs were seldom, even at that 
time, found, and the only indication of their having nested was 
the young birds being caught by retrievers. In Salmon’s diar}’’, 
under date 4 th June, 1834, occurs the following entry ; — “Went 
into y* [Norwich] IMuseum, there are four young Bitterns about a 
week old in a nest placed amongst reeds, ifec., these were obtained from 
between Norwich and Yarmouth, a proof that the bird still breeds 
in this county.” The spring “ boom ” was generally firet heard about 
the ITith iMarch, the earliest out of nineteen observations mentioned 
by Marsham being February 20th, and the latest May 3rd. This 
call appears to have ceiised probably when the female bird began to 
sit, !Mr. Kising notes having heard one boom at Horsey “at Mid- 
summer” as unusually late. In May, 18CG, and again in the first 
week in !March, 1SG7, the breeding note of the Bittern was heard at 
lloveton. The last eggs were taken on 30th March, 18G8, and on 
the 2oth Jlay of the same year a young bird was caught alive at the 
same locality. In the last week of May, 188G, the Bittern’s boom 
was again heard at Sutton Broad, and subsequently in other localities 
in the same neighbourhood, and on the 10th August a young female 
Bittern, with the down still adhering to some of its feathers, was 
sent to ^Ir. Colo from Ludham, rendering it probable that the birds 
heard in the spring succeeded in bringing off young ones. As a 
winter migrant, the Bittern is not uncommon in this county. — S. 
