The Bittern belongs to the same family as the herons, the cranes, and the storks, and has many of the habits common to them all. It is, however, essentially a bird of solitude, hating the vicinity of man, and living in the most retired spots of marshy ground. As it sits among the reeds and rushes, though it is a large bird, it is scarcely visible even to a practised eye, its mottled plumage harmonizing with surrounding objects in such a way that the feathers of the bird can scarcely be distinguished from the sticks, stones, and grass tufts among which it sits. The ground colour of the plumage is dark buff, upon which are sprinkled mottlings and streaks of black, chestnut, grey, and brown. These mottled marks harmonize with the stones and tufts of withered grass, while the longitudinal dashes of buff and black on the neck and breast correspond with the sticks and reeds. In a similar manner the tiger, though so large an animal, can lie in a very small covert of reeds without being detected, its striped fur corresponding with the reeds themselves and the shadows thrown by them; and the leopard can remain hidden among the boughs of a tree, its spotted coat harmonizing with the broken light and shade of the foliage. [Illustration: THE BITTERN.] The following powerful description of the Bittern's home is given by Mudie: "It is a bird of rude nature, where the land knows no character save that which the untrained, working of the elements impresses upon it; so that when any locality is in the course of being won to usefulness, the bittern is the first to depart, and when any one is abandoned, it is the last to return. 'The bittern shall dwell there' is the final curse, and implies that the place is to become uninhabited and uninhabitable. It hears not the whistle of the ploughman, nor the sound of the mattock; and the tinkle of the sheep-bell, or the lowing of the ox (although the latter bears so much resemblance to its own hollow and dismal voice, that it has given foundation to the name), is a signal for it to be gone. "Extensive and dingy pools--if moderately upland, so much the better--which lie in the hollows, catching, like so many traps, the lighter and more fertile mould which the rains wash and the winds blow from the naked heights around, and converting it into harsh and dingy vegetation, and the pasture of those loathsome things which wriggle in the ooze, or crawl and swim in the putrid and mantling waters, are the habitation of the bittern. "Places which scatter blight and mildew over every herb which is more delicate than a sedge, a carex, or a rush, and consume every wooded plant that is taller than the sapless and tasteless cranberry or the weeping upland willow; which shed murrain over the quadrupeds, chills which eat the flesh off their bones, and which, if man ventures there, consume him by putrid fever in the hot and dry season, and shake him to pieces with ague when the weather is cold and humid.