% 
” 
: 
net 
im 
4 
Pa 
<= 
” 
ER Fama ites a 
Young of American Bittern. 
searce, the night herons build their cities 
low down, on rude platforms of dead stems 
among the reeds that grow from the water 
in marshy sloughs or along the shores of 
lakes. Even where there is a timber-strip 
nearby, they seem to have lost the habit, in 
the prairie country, of bemg arboreal. 
It isusually in reedy bogs—the boggier the 
better—that we are most likely to find the 
common bittern. By hiding or sneaking in 
such a place, I have been enabled to watch 
the queer fellow under various cireum- 
stances. Gracefully he steps along, or runs 
through some tangle, but when he stops, 
almost always he points his bill up in the air, 
making himself so closely resemble a dead 
reed or rush that it is very hard to distin- 
euish him. But the making of his booming, 
or pumping note is the queerest perform- 
anee. He works his head and neck up and 
down as though he were choking, and the 
sound made is remarkably like that pro- 
duced by an old-fashioned wooden pump ; 
first the ictus, then the gurglng of the 
water. At a distance, only the first part can 
be heard, which certainly sounds like the 
blow of a mallet on a stake, or even an axe- 
stroke. 
For years I could never find a bittern’s 
nest, though I searched thickets and jun- 
gles—all sorts of places but the right ones. 
Finally, one day, when I was wading a 
reedy bog, a great brown bird sprang up 
almost into my face, leaving four brownish- 
drab eges on alittle platform of dead rushes. 
Sinee then I have found seores of these 
nests—in New England, the Magdalen 
Islands, and North Dakota. Though both 
our bitterns are more unsocial than most 
herons in their nesting habits, half a dozen or 
more nests of either kind may be found in 
the same bog. Such has been my experience 
