35 
AMERICAN BITTERN. 
JlRDEJl MLYOR. 
[Plate LXV.— Fig. 3.] 
Le Butor de la Baye de Hudson, Briss. V, p. 449, 25. — Buff. VII, p, 430. — Edw. 136. — 
Lath. Syn, III, p. 58, var. A.—Ardea StellariSi var* A, Gmel. Syst. I, p» 636.— 
Zool No. 357. — Feale^s Museum, No. 3727. 
THIS is another nocturnal species, common to all our sea and 
river marshes, though nowhere numerous ; it rests all day among 
the reeds and I’ushes, and unless disturbed, flies and feeds only 
during the night. In some places it is called the Indian Hen ; on 
the seacoast of New Jersey it is known by the name of Dimkadoo, 
a word probably imitative of its common note. They are also 
found in the interior, having myself killed one at the inlet of the 
Seneca Lake, in October. It utters at times a hollow guttural 
note among the reeds ; but has nothing of that loud booming 
sound for which the European Bittern is so remarkable. This 
circumstance, with its great inferiority of size, and difference of 
marking, sufficiently pi'ove them to be two distinct species, al- 
though hitherto the present has been classed as a mere variety of 
the European Bittern. These birds, we are informed, visit Severn 
river, at Hudson's Bay, about the beginning of June ; make their 
nests in swamps, laying four cinereous green eggs among the long 
grass. The young are said to be at first black. 
These birds, when disturbed, rise with a hollow kwa, and are 
then easily shot down, as they fly heavily. Like other night birds 
their sight is most acute during the evening twilight; but their 
hearing is at all times exquisite. 
The American Bittern is twenty-seven inches long, and three 
feet four inches in extent ; from the point of the bill to the extre- 
