American Bittern 
261 
Unlike the solitary little green cousin, the black- 
crowned heron delights in company, and a 
hundred noisy pairs may choose to nest in some 
favourite spot. How they squawk over their 
petty quarrels! Wilson likened the noise to 
tliat of “ two or three hundred Indians choking 
one another.” 
Only when they have young fledglings to feed 
do these herons hunt for food in broad day- 
light. But as the light fades they become in- 
creasingly active and noisy; even after it is 
pitch dark, when the fishermen go eeling, you 
may hear them quawking continually as they 
fly up and down the creek. Big, pearly-gray 
birds (they stand fully two feet high) with 
black-crowned heads, from which their long, 
narrow, white wedding feathers fall over the 
black top of the back, the night herons so 
harmonise with the twilight as to seem a part 
of it. 
AMERICAN BITTERN 
Called also: Stake-driver; Poke; Freckled 
Heron; Booming Bittern; Indian Hen 
Even if you have never seen this shy hermit of 
large swamps and marshy meadows you must 
know him by his remarkable “barbaric yawp.” 
Not a muscle does this brown and blackish and 
