48 
ARDEA MINOR. 
sound for which the European bittern is so remarkable. 
This circumstance, with its great inferiority of size, 
and difference of marking, sufficiently prove them to be 
two distinct species, although, 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 Java, 
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 extremity of the toes, it measures three 
feet ; the bill is four inches long ; the upper mandible, 
black : the lower, greenish yellow ; lores and eyelids, 
yellow; irides, bright yellow; upper part of the head, 
flat, and remarkably depressed; the plumage there is of 
a deep blackish brown, long behind and on the neck, the 
general colour of which is a yellowish brown shaded 
with darker ; this long plumage of the neck the bird 
can throw forward at will, when irritated, so as to give 
him a more formidable appearance ; throat, whitish, 
streaked with deep brown ; from the posterior and 
lower part of the auricuiars, a broad patch of deep 
black passes diagonally across the neck, a distinguished 
characteristic of this species ; the back is deep brown, 
barred and mottled with innumerable specks and streaks 
of brownish yellow; quills, black, with a leaden gloss, 
and tipt with yellowish brown ; legs and feet, yellow, 
tinged with pale green ; middle claw, pectinated; belly, 
light yellowish brown, streaked with darker; vent, 
plain ; thighs, sprinkled on the outside with grains of 
dark brown ; male and female, nearly alike, the latter 
somewhat less. According to Bewick, the tail of the 
European bittern contains only ten feathers ; the Ame- 
