The boy evidently took us for a pair of ignoramuses from the city.
“I guess it’s a frog,” he answered. But when the sounds were repeated he shook his head and confessed honestly that he didn’t know what made them.
It was too bad, I thought, that he did not stick to his frog theory. It would have made so much better a story! He appeared to feel no curiosity about the matter, and we allowed him to pass on unenlightened.
Not all Wayland people are thus poorly informed, however, and we shortly learned, to our considerable satisfaction, that they have a most felicitous local name for the bird. They call him “plum-pudd’n’,” which is exactly what he himself says, only that his u is in both words somewhat long, like the vowel in “full.” To get the true effect of the words they should be spoken with the lips nearly closed, and in a deep voice.
A few days after this excursion I found a bittern in a large wet meadow somewhat nearer home. At the nearest he was a long way off, and as I went farther and farther away from him, I remarked the very unexpected fact that the last syllable to be lost was not the second, which bears so sharp an accent, but the long first syllable. It seemed contrary to reason, but such was unquestionably the truth, and later experiments confirmed it.
This was in the spring of 1888. In May of the next year, if all went well, we would see the show again. So we said to each other; but a veteran ornithologist remarked that we should probably be a good many years older before we had another such piece of good fortune.
It is a fact familiar to all naturalists, however, that when you have once found a new plant, or a new bird, or a new nest, the experience is likely to be soon repeated. You may have spent a dozen years in a vain search, but now, for some reason, the difficult has all at once become easy, and almost before you can believe your eyes the rarity has grown to be a drug in the market. Something like this proved to be true of the bittern’s boom.
On the afternoon of the 2d of May, 1889, I went to one of my favorite resorts, a large cat-tail swamp surrounded by woods. My particular errand was to see whether the least bittern had arrived,—a much smaller, and in this part of the country, at least, a much less common bird than his relative of whose vocal accomplishments I am here treating.
I threw myself down upon the cliff overhanging the edge of the swamp, to listen for the desired coo-coo-coo-coo, and had barely made myself comfortable when I heard the plum-pudd’n’ of the bittern himself, proceeding, as it seemed, from the reeds directly at my feet. Further listening satisfied me that the fellow was not far from the end of a rocky peninsula which juts into the swamp just at this point.
I slipped down the cliff as quietly as possible, picked my way across the narrow neck leading to the main peninsula, and by keeping behind rocks and trees managed to reach the very tip without disturbing the bird. Here I posted myself among the thick trees, and awaited a repetition of the boom. It was not long in coming, and plainly proceeded from a bunch of flags just across a little stretch of clear water.