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The proper English name of the bird which vulgar acceptance forces us to now call bittern. They are kept there also to be sold either for ready money in the open markets, or else to be spent at home in good company amongst their neighbours without reprehension or fines.
It was a night of rain-squalls and moonlit streaks when Pharaoh, wandering devious among the reeds, first became aware of the bittern, in the shape of reptilian green eyes steadily regarding him from the piebald shadows. Possibly the cat's whiskers first hinted at some new presence by reason of the "ancient and fish-like smell" which pervaded this precise reed jungle. Pharaoh stopped dead.
Then he would answer it himself and go right ahead. Boynton, the managing editor, was coiled up at his desk, wearing a look of patient endurance on his face. Harty, the telegraph editor, was trying to do his work trying, I say, because the orator was booming away like a bittern within three feet of him and Harty plainly was pestered and fretful.
This is the only occurrence of this bird in the Channel Islands yet recorded; but as the bird occasionally crosses to this side of the Atlantic several specimens having occurred in the British Islands it may possibly occur in Guernsey or some of the Channel Islands again. It may, therefore, be as well to point out the principal distinctions between this bird and the Common Bittern last mentioned.
The porcupine, or kephad, is spoken of in the writings of Isaiah under the denomination of the bittern. "I will make Babylon a possession for the bittern and pools of water."
No more thy glassy brook reflects the day, But choked with sedges, works its weedy way; Along thy glades, a solitary guest, The hollow-sounding bittern guards its nest; Amidst thy desert walks the lapwing flies, And tires their echoes with unvaried cries.
I have also caught them preparing and eating sea gulls, terns, blue heron, egret and even the bittern. I have secured 128 convictions since the first of last September. Partridge are waning fast, quail gradually becoming extinct, prairie chickens almost extinct. Duck-shooting is rare. The gray squirrel is fast becoming extinct in Minnesota.
"Do you hear that melancholy cry from the meadow there?" answered the shepherd, "that is the bittern; he was once a shepherd, and so was the hoopoe also, I will tell you the story. The bittern pastured his flocks on rich green meadows where flowers grew in abundance, so his cows became wild and unmanageable.
It belongs with the soil beneath our towns. It is the spirit of the past crying to us. So the dirge of the frog is the cry of the spirit of river and marshland. Our robins and bluebirds are of the orchard and the home of man, but who can claim neighbourship to the bittern or the bullfrog? There is nothing of civilisation in the hoarse croak of the great blue heron.
The most remarkable of the Persian birds are the eagle, the vulture, the cormorant, the falcon, the bustard, the pheasant, the heath-cock, the red-legged partridge, the small gray partridge, the pin tailed grouse, the sand-grouse, the francolin, the wild swan, the flamingo, the stork, the bittern, the oyster-catcher, the raven, the hooded crow, and the cuckoo.
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