Bittern Facts
Bittern Facts
Bittern numbers are estimated from the number of male bitterns that boom in the breeding season. They do this to attract the females and establish their territory each male has a unique voice.
Bitterns used to be hunted for food. In Norfolk, they were called butterbump because they have so much fat on them.
Bitterns look like a small, brown heron with a shorter neck; they are about 70�80 cm tall.
The average booming territory of UK bitterns is about 20 hectares (about 24 football pitches) of wet reedbed and open water.
Bittern nests are a platform of reed stems among standing reeds.
When alarmed, bitterns imitate the reeds by sticking their head up straight and swaying in the wind.
Their favourite food is eels.
Bitterns can swim.
Neolithic bitterns are preserved in the peat of many areas of eastern England and Wales indicating the past wide distribution of the species.
In very hard winters bitterns seek out open water. Manmade features (such as roads) seem frequently to be mistaken for water and perhaps account for the records of weakened birds in very strange places - a bus stop at Stoke Newington in London, the central reservation of a motorway at Durham, and a shop window at Gravesend in Kent!
The boom of the male bittern is the lowest-pitched and the most far-carrying song produced by any European bird. It can be heard up to 5 km away in the right weather conditions.
It used to be thought that the booming was produced by the bittern thrusting its bill into the marsh and calling or even blowing down a reed stem.
Other old wive�s tales state that the bittern only booms in odd numbers, and that it is sid to be bad luck to hear the bittern.
In the Bible, a bittern�s boom pronounced the doom of Babylon.
In Suffolk ship�s foghorns are called sea bitterns.
