General Notes 
Notes on the American Bittern.-Late last September a female Botaurus 
lentiginosus was discovered by some boys upon the margin of a small pond 
at a short distance behind my residence. It was a most unusual locality 
for the species to occur, and its coming there appeared to have been due 
to the fact that the bird was exhausted by long flight. After flying a few 
yards it was easily captured, and was brought to me alive, without having 
received any bodily harm whatever. Next morning it had recovered no 
little of its strength, and it was remarkable to observe how noiselessly and 
with what ease it could fly about a furnished room without overturning 
any small object of furniture. It gracefully flew up from the floor and 
perched upon the curtain rod of a high window, where it sat for an hour 
or more in a characteristic position, as motionless as a statue. 1 
approached when upon the ground, it eyed you keenly, assumed a squat- 
tin- posture, widely spread out the feathers at either side of the neck 
while it slightly raised those of the rest of the body and its wings; and 
finally, when it considered you within the proper distance, drew all its 
plumage close to its body and delivered, as quick as a flash, a darting blow 
with its beak. This thrust, I am sure, is generally given with sufficient 
violence to pierce one nearly through an eye, even were the lid instinc¬ 
tively drawn down to protect that organ. By such ablow it can easily stab 
a large frog through and through its head, impaling the creature upon the 
end of its beak,-a feat I have seen the bird perform. A loud blowing 
noise accompanies this attack of the Bittern, vyhich vanes ip its intensity, 
—depending apparently much upon the degree of anger to which the 
bird has been excited by its tormentors. My captive behaved much in 
the same way when held up by the legs in front of another person, and 
one had to exercise great care to avoid its quick and well-delivered 
thrusts. At the end of three or four days, it having eaten nothing up to 
that time, nor drunk any water, I offered it a live medium-sized frog to 
try its appetite. It promptly laid out that poor batrachian by a few tell¬ 
ing stabs given with its beak, sending one home every time the animal 
moved a limb. Immediately after killing it, it was picked up with the 
bill, and throwing back its head the bird attempted to swallow the morsel. 
In this it failed after several trials, and finally abandoned it for good and 
all. This Bittern lived twelve days without ever having eaten a single 
thing or swallowed a drop of water. It passed several thin, cream- 
colored evacuations from the bowels every twenty-four hours, and died, 
apparently without any pain, in a squatting position, absolutely un¬ 
ruffled in plumage, on the evening of the twelfth day—a plucky fowl to 
the instant of its death. 
There is one very interesting point to observe here, and it is the fact 
that the lower the position a bird occupies in the system the greater the 
length of time it seems to be enabled to go without partaking of any 
nutriment whatever. Gannets and Cormorants will live nearly a month 
without either eating or drinking anything, while on the other hand any 
of the small Passeres will succumb in a few days to such treatment. In 
this connection it is important to note that many lizards will live several 
months without consuming a morsel of food or a drop of water. This 
may be another particular in which the lower birds approach their rep¬ 
tilian kin. 
While dissecting this Bittern with the view of saving its skeleton, and 
observing what else I could in its anatomy, I found that it possessed a 
peculiar arrangement and modification of the vertebrae and certain 
muscles in the upper third of the neck, much as we find it in Plotus 
anhinga , and in a less marked degree in Cormorants, the Gannets, and 
Pelicans. This modification, which is associated with the power of the 
birds mentioned (especially the Darters and Bitterns) of giving a quick 
thrust with the beak, has been well described by Garrod, a paper among 
his ‘Collected Scientific Memoirs,’ and by Donitz, and is well worthy of 
close study and comparison. Garrod does not mention having observed 
it in Botaurus and its allies. — R. W. Shufeldt, Takoma, D.C. 
Auk X, J*n, 18»3. P.77-78, 
