Birds that Come and Go If some birds vanish or
grow rare, some increase. Among these may be reckoned the bittern. A pair, which showed a certain tameness, were flushed the other day in Hertfordshire, where this bird has been almost as rare as the vanished bustard that used to frequent this shire. It happened by an odd coincidence that simultaneously with a report of these welcome visitors I read in a delightfully picturesque 'letter from North Africa an account of three migrating bittern " obviously exhausted, beaks wide open, circling for half an hour before going on to the marshes further inland." In the same month, September, the same coast was invaded by an exclusive host of Painted Ladies which acted very much like the bittern. They came in from the sea in small groups " very low down, just clearing the water, and on crossing the coast . . . climbed a little, and many pairs circled and made their curtsey to each other." Most of them—or. so it seemed—stopped for a while on the coast till "every tree had its aura of them." What a migrant the species is! I have seen numbers arrive just so on the coast of Devon in May.
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