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"It would be easy for you to mistake them, but the habits of the two species are quite different. The Bittern nests on the ground, in a reedy bog, not in the woods, and may be seen flying in broad daylight, with his long legs trailing behind him.

The bird was a bittern, relation of the herons, only brown, and if not quite so long, made up for it in strength and fiery, highly developed courage. Caution is not the polecat's trump card, as it is the cat's, but if ever he trod carefully, it was thence onwards, as he threaded the dike-cut and pool-dotted gloom. He came upon a lone bull bellowing, and gave him room.

"It was very good of you," said the Kangaroo gratefully, "and it is not the first time you have saved Kangaroos by your cleverness. I didn't know you Bitterns were near, so I told Dot to make a noise in the hope of frightening them." The Bittern was really touched by the Kangaroo's gratitude, and was delighted at being called clever, so it became still more ungracious.

Just as I drove through the gate, I saw the eldest gall a makin for the house for dear life she had a short petticoat on that looked like a kilt, and her bare legs put me in mind of the long shanks of a bittern down in a rush swamp, a drivin away like mad full chizel arter a frog. I could not think what on airth was the matter.

The echoes are in us of great voices long gone hence, the unknown cries of huge beasts on the mountains; the sullen aims of creatures in the slime; the love-call of the bittern.

"For a minute he couldn't see anything, and then he said, 'Pshaw! that's only a Bittern; but I do wish I had my gun. "'Why doesn't he move? said I. 'Look at the way he holds his head straight up, like a stick. I'm going round behind him to see what his back looks like. "'He's a stupid thing, and thinks we don't see him, said the miller.

From far away where the marshes stretched their limitless expanse toward the sea came the melancholy cry of a bittern, calling to his absent mate. A vague longing surged in the strong man's heart; he stretched out his arms up to the dark, starlit canopy above, and a sigh, half impatient, wholly melancholy, escaped his half-closed lips.

In order to draw them off the shore, he stood away, but as they would not follow the Bittern out of shoal water, she again steered towards them, yawing to bring her guns to bear, while they kept up a steady fire on her. She, however, sank or disabled eight of them, but the rest for a time escaped.

"A wager, Lord King!" said a prelate, whose strong family likeness to William proclaimed him to be the Duke's bold and haughty brother, Odo , Bishop of Bayeux; "a wager. My steed to your palfrey that the Duke's falcon first fixes the bittern."

Afterwards the Kangaroo told her that the little Bittern is a really tender-hearted fellow, but he has an idea that kindness in rather small creatures provokes the contempt of the big ones.