BY BRADFORD TORREY
Since I printed, in 'The Auk' (Vol. vi, p. 1), a description of the Bittern's vocal performances, I have witnessed a repetition of them on three occasions; and the story of my successes, such as they are, may be encouraging to the younger readers of Bird-Lore.
The remarkable sounds, sometimes likened to those of an old-fashioned wooden pump, sometimes to those made by a man driving a stake in wet soil (and the likeness is unmistakable, not to say perfect, in both cases), must have attracted attention, we may suppose, ever since the settlement of the country. The dullest person could not hear them, it would seem, without wondering how and by what they were produced. But up to the time of my 'Auk' article, there was only one authentic record, so far as I am aware, that the bird had ever been seen in the act of uttering them. For my own part, having never lived near a meadow adapted to the Bittern's purposes, I had never so much as heard his famous 'boom,' though references to it here and there, in the writings of Thoreau especially, had given me a lively desire to do so. It was a strange accident, surely, that the first Bittern I had ever heard should show himself so openly and for so long a time. Beginners' luck, we may call it, and be thankful that such providential encouragements are not so very uncommon. As the Scripture says, "The last shall be first."
On the 2d of May, 1889, a year after the observations recorded in 'The Auk' article, I was lying upon a cliff on the edge of a cat-tail swamp, listening for Rail notes or a Least Bittern's coo, when a Bittern, very much to my surprise, pumped almost at my feet. By good luck a small wooded peninsula jutted into the swamp just at that point (the swamp, I regret to say, has since been converted into a town reservoir), and, keeping in the shelter of rocks and trees, I stole out to its very tip unobserved. Two or three times the notes were repeated, but I could get no sight of the performer. Then, all in a flash, he stood before me—as no doubt he had been doing all the while—in full view, just across a narrow space of open water against a patch of cat-tails. He had taken no alarm, and pumped six or eight times while I stood, opera-glass in hand, watching his slightest motion. Then he stalked away into the reeds, pumped twice,—behind the scenes, as it were,—and fell silent.
Two days later I went to the Wayland meadows, where I had seen my bird of the year previous, and there, seated upon the railroad embankment, as before, I watched a Bittern pump at short intervals for more than an hour. Most of the time he was more or less hidden by the low grass, through which he was slowly traveling down the meadow; but once, coming near the remains of a last year's haycock, he went a little out of his way, mounted it, and boomed in full sight. The Bittern is a wader and a recluse, but once in a while, it appears, he has no objection to a clear platform and dry feet.
I felt myself highly favored. Twice within three days I had been admitted to "assist" at mysteries of which Thoreau, who spent his life in the best of Bittern country, had never obtained so much as a glimpse.
Exactly a year afterward (May 4, 1890) I was strolling along a road near home, when from a meadow beside it came the now familiar pumping notes. I made toward the spot, and by the help of a clump of alder bushes approached within a very short distance of the bird, who stood in short grass, quite unconcealed. A migratory visitor only, he must have been, for I am certain that no Bittern ever summered in that place during my years of residence near it. I watched him at his work till I was tired. Then, bethinking myself of a friend and neighbor who knew nothing about birds, but had once expressed to me a curiosity about the 'Stake-driver,' I walked to the village, rang his doorbell, and invited him to go back with me to see the show. The showman was still rehearsing, and we stole upon him without difficulty, and saw as much as we wished of his doings. Though it was Sunday morning, and the bird was as serious as any parson, we took the liberty of laughing a little at his absurd contortions.
Since then I have heard the Bittern's music on sundry occasions, but never have found it possible to come within sight of him in the act of making it. Once, I remember, I was sitting upon a roadside fence, reading, when a carriage stopped and an unrecognized feminine voice said: "Do you see that Heron behind you, Mr. Torrey?" The "Heron" was Botaurus lentiginosus, in a bit of low ground close by a house. I shut my book and gave him my attention, which he presently rewarded by catching and swallowing a snake. This was in autumn, when Bitterns, like lesser birds, are liable to turn up in unexpected quarters. The reader may take the incident, if he will, as a warning against the reading of print out of doors. As a general thing, we may safely say, Nature's page is better than a book.