316 
ARDEIDiE. 
GRALLA TORES. 
ARDEIDuE . 
BITTERN. 
Botaurus stellaris. 
PLATE LXXXIII. FIG. II. 
Although this beautiful and conspicuous bird might, at 
one time, have been met with in most of the marshy dis¬ 
tricts of this country, there are now no hopes that so large 
a bird will much longer remain a tenant of our land, or 
that it can escape the multitudes of idlers who infest the 
country carrying guns. The increase of population, and 
with it that of cultivation, and the enclosure of our waste 
lands, is daily decreasing, and will, in a few years, alto¬ 
gether exterminate, these wild tenants of the waste. 
Mr. Wolley tells me that men now living have shot 
them in abundance in the fens of Cambridge. Mr. Eyton 
mentions two instances in which the Bittern has been 
known to breed in Shropshire, and Mr. Fisher of Yar¬ 
mouth has an egg taken at Banworth in Norfolk. 
The Bittern makes its nest in the heart of fens and 
almost impenetrable marshy districts; and, according to 
Dr. Thieneman, is careful to raise it beyond the effects of 
any temporary rising of the water, by placing it upon a 
mass of fallen reeds and prostrate rushes. The nest is 
formed of reeds, rushes, and grass, with occasionally a 
few sticks, slightly hollowed for the reception of the 
eggs, and sometimes lined with the cotton of the reed. 
The eggs are from three to five in number; the time of 
incubation the month of May. 
