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bittern

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bittern

Any of several species of small herons, in particular the common bittern Botaurus stellaris of Europe and Asia. It is shy, stoutly built, buff-coloured, speckled with black and tawny brown, with a long bill and a loud, booming call. Its habit of holding its neck and bill in a vertical position conceals it among the reeds, where it rests by day, hunting for frogs, reptiles, and fish towards nightfall. An inhabitant of marshy country, it is now extremely rare in Britain. In 2000 there were only an estimated 20 pairs of bitterns breeding in the British Isles.



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? Mentioned in ? References in classic literature
 
When they went once more into the long hall with the windows and the mirrors, yellow evening was dropping over the waters and the willowy banks; and a bittern sounded in the distance like an elf upon his dwarfish drum.
The Innocence Of Father Brown by Chesterton, Gilbert K. View in context
It was a common sound in those parts--as common as the chatter of the jays and the booming of the bittern.
The White Company by Doyle, Sir Arthur Conan View in context
We need the tonic of wildness -- to wade sometimes in marshes where the bittern and the meadow-hen lurk, and hear the booming of the snipe; to smell the whispering sedge where only some wilder and more solitary fowl builds her nest, and the mink crawls with its belly close to the ground.
Walden & on the Duty of Civil Disobedience by Thoreau, Henry David View in context
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