Dan Xensch, age 12, of Monroe, Michigan, for his question:
What kind of bird is the bittern?
The big brown bittern prefers a solitary life in swampy marsh regions. If you are here at the right season, you will hear his loud rusty voice cry pumplank, pump again and again. You may glimpse him as he flies low over the water, but chances are you will pot get a close look at him.
The stately herons are wading birds and patient fishermen. The bittern is a member of the heron family, though he is not as slim or as colorful as some of his cousins. He is a big, chunky bird and his speckled brown plumage blends invisibly with the cattails and the reedy rushes of his marshy background. All the herons are very fussy about grooming and keep their graceful feathers glossy and spotlessly clean. The bittern is the fuzziest eater of them all. He spends an hour or more preening his plumage after every meal.
The body of a big bittern may be almost a yard long and his wings are wide and strong. He flies with his thin legs held straight behind, his neck tucked under his chin and his sharp beak pointing the way ahead. The plumage of his back is speckled and freckled with; chestnut and chocolate browns and dotted with black. His undersides are creamy buff and striped with tan. His subtle color scheme blends with the tufts of shadowy marsh plants that grow knee deep in the water.
This is where the bittern spends most of his time, standing with his greenish yellow legs in the swampy water. He waits patiently for hours, stiff and still, with his bright eyes watching for passing fish, frogs and dragonflies. Then he darts his sharp beak and gobbles down a snack, alive and kicking. Marsh water tends to be muddy and oozy dribbles may soil his glossy plumage. So after dinner, the bittern cleans himself.
The well groomed bird has a built in pocket of oily cleanser and a built in pocket of dusting powder. The oil is secreted by special glands at the base of his tail. The powder is gathered from patches of down feathers on his breast. One of his toes is toothed for use as a comb. The fussy fellow twists end turns his long neck to peck a dip of oily and a dab of powder again and again. After an hour or so of this grooming, every feather is thoroughly cleaned and combed, preened and polished from end to end.
Parent bitterns live separate lives until nesting time. Then the pair gather roots and grasses to build a big shaggy nest on the ground. It may be in a wet, weedy meadow or at the very brink of reedy swampland. The big, buff
toned eggs are two inches long and their nest may hold five of them. By summer's end, the young bitterns are grown and their wings are strong enough to take them on a thousand mile flight to their winter quarters.
Come fall, the big brown herons spread their wide wings and start south from the marshy patches north of the prairies, from the reedy rivers and secret swampy pockets among the western mountains, from the Great Lakes and from the countless lakes and rivers of Canada. Most of them winter along the Gulf Coast and throughout Florida. Some visit the Carolina shoreline and some go west to the coastal mountains of California. In early spring, the bitterns start north, spread out through their wide summer range and rear their young.