HARMFUL
THE BITTERN.
The Bittern.
(Botaurus stellaris.)
The bittern is a strange-looking bird which as it moves stealthily among the reed-beds, has given rise to many superstitions and weird beliefs. Yet it is nothing but a greedy, insatiable cousin of the Heron, living on small fishes, but not despising young birds, water-rats, water-beetles, frogs, and even horse-leeches as food. Its eyes at once announce that it is a night bird. On a still night its booming can be heard more than a mile and a half away; and from this the bird has received some of its local names, such as “Bumble” and “Mire-drum.” The sounds which it utters are deep, hollow roars, as though they came from some large animal; many people will not believe that these sounds proceed from a slender bird. They sound like “Cu-prumb-cu-prumm-cu-um.” Sometimes, though not often, a “boo” is added to the “prumb.” Learned scientific books have been written on the nature of these sounds. The truth is that they occur when the bird draws air into its feed-pipe until it is full and then expels it forcibly. In this way it produces its mating-call, the love-song of the male bird. It is not given to every bird to sing like the nightingale.
This deep-toned cry is rarely heard now in our British marshlands, where the bird now comes only to be shot and sent to the shop of the bird preserver. It has, of course, been getting scarcer every year. In Selby’s time it was very scarce in some seasons, yet he records the fact that in the winter of 1830 to 1831 ten bitterns were exposed for sale on one morning in Bath, and sixty were taken the same season in Yorkshire. “Butter-bumps” was the popular name for the noisy bird, which, as some said, bellowed like a bull. The late Lord Lilford wrote that he knew a lady who said that when she was first married, about the year 1845, and went to live in East Norfolk, she was constantly kept awake by the Bittern’s booming in the neighbouring marshes. Tennyson’s farmer called it the bogle.