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Updated: May 11, 2025
She listened to the cooing of the doves, the booming of the bitterns in the reeds, and the drumming of the snipe high in air. She counted the game trekking along the ridge till her mind grew weary. She sought consolation from the breast of Nature and found none; she sought it in the starlit skies, and oh! they were very far away. Death reigned within her who outwardly was so fair to see.
It was not till the end of half an hour that two figures were seen above the parapet of the dreary old pile, motionless as bitterns on a ruined mosque. Even then Stephen was not true enough to perform what he was so courteous to promise, and he vanished without making a sign. He returned at midday. Elfride looked vexed when unconscious that his eyes were upon her; when conscious, severe.
This was more particularly the case with the water-birds, as ducks, bitterns, pelicans, cormorants, and swans, we saw few of the latter, but generally heard them at night passing over our heads from N.W. to S.E. or vice versu; but we never afterwards found any waters which we could suppose those birds could frequent in the distant interior.
They are all gone now. No longer do the ruffs trample the sedge into a hard floor in their fighting-rings, while the sober reeves stand round, admiring the tournament of their lovers, gay with ears and tippets, no two of them alike. Gone are ruffs and reeves, spoonbills, bitterns, avosets; the very snipe, one hears, disdains to breed.
Down the valley crept the mist, trailing its filmy veils over point and peak and ridge. The air throbbed with the cries of geese and bitterns. The hush of the spring-time night set in and covered the world that hush that is more vibrant than thunder, that gathers the forest sounds and murmurs to itself, and weaves them all into a tense, vernal harmony.
Since Christmas there is sent you of your own hawk's killing, eleven teals, two mallards, and eleven bitterns. And I humbly take my leave of your Mastership. From Oxburgh, 20 of December 1563, by your poor servant, "Wm. Deye."
Here on the banks they watched the bitterns rise and sail heavily away, and finally in silence commenced the genuine sport. "Nonsense!" said Helen Heath, meaningly, as Mrs. Laudersdale, when the others joined them, displayed her first capture. "Is that all you've caught?" Mrs. Laudersdale drew in another for reply. "How absurd!" said Helen.
This was the first course merely. In the second were all kinds of game and wild-fowl, roast herons three in a dish, bitterns, cranes, bustards, curlews, dotterels, and pewits. Besides these there were lumbar pies, marrow pies, quince pies, artichoke pies, florentines, and innumerable other good things.
It's the mud settling, or the water rising, or something." "No, no, that was a living voice." "Well, perhaps it was. Did you ever hear a bittern booming?" "No, I never did." "It's a very rare bird practically extinct in England now, but all things are possible upon the moor. Yes, I should not be surprised to learn that what we have heard is the cry of the last of the bitterns."
"Much good she'd have been to you with the Blacks, and their dogs after you, if we Bitterns hadn't played that old trick of ours of scaring them with our big voices. He! he! he!" it chuckled, "how they did run when we tuned up! They thought the Bunyip had got them this time. Didn't we laugh!"
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