LARGE-BILLED MANGROVE-BITTERN. 
“ The Thick-biUed Mangrove Bittern {Butorides imatrorhy'Mhus) has not bred 
here [Upper Clarence River] at all this season, and I think the dry- 
weather is the cause. I have only found one nest with four eggs, but 
last year I obtained them very plentifully. Since the late rains they seem 
to have come back again, for I saw a number yesterday. These birds 
often sit on a stump Just above water, with their heads bent down, and 
one can see them make darts with their bills into the water. What they 
pick up I do not know, but it is apparently something that floats by. 
“ The nest is a concave platform of small sticks and twigs, about 
fourteen to flfteen inches in diameter, and is usually placed in the fork of 
a horizontal branch hanging over water ; on one or two occasions I have 
found them several hundred yards from water. The eggs are three or four 
for a sitting, mostly the latter, pale blue. The nests are always placed 
singly, and I have never found it in colonies as described by Gould ; it 
commences to construct its nest in September, and by the end of that 
month the eggs are usually laid, the breeding season continuing during 
October, November and December. It builds quickly, taking about a 
fortnight to construct its nest, and lay the full complement of eggs.”* 
The bird figured and described is a female, collected at Gosford, New 
South Wales, in December, 1894. 
W 
* Savidge, Amir. Mua. Sp. Cat., no. 1, Vol. IV., p. 39, 1913. 
VOL, ni. 
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