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American Bittern | Botaurus lentiginosus
Amerikaanse roerdomp | Avetoro lentiginoso
The American Bittern is a large, brown-streaked heron of extensive marshes that breeds in North America and migrates in winter to, among other places, the northern Caribbean. Its camouflage and its habit of standing motionless among the reeds mean it is often overlooked.
Voice
Usually silent in winter. Flushed birds give a hoarse, raw kok-kok. The deep, pumping display call oonk-a-lunk belongs to the breeding grounds and can be expected in the region in spring at most.
Recording: Stanislas Wroza — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
58–85 cm, stocky and thick-necked, with a rather short yellow bill and green-yellow legs. The upperparts are warm brown, finely speckled and vermiculated. The throat is white, the underparts cream with broad brown streaks. A long black stripe runs from below the eye down the side of the neck; this is the key feature. In flight the dark flight feathers contrast with the brown wing coverts. The sexes are alike; juveniles largely lack the black neck stripe.
Confusion species
Juvenile Black-crowned Night Heron Nycticorax nycticorax and Yellow-crowned Night Heron Nyctanassa violacea are also streaked brown, but smaller and shorter-necked, have white spots on the wings and no black neck stripe; in flight the wings are uniform. Least Bittern Botaurus exilis is much smaller and has a pale wing patch. Pinnated Bittern Botaurus pinnatus has a barred neck without a black stripe and in the region occurs only in Trinidad.
Habitat
Fresh and brackish marshes with tall vegetation, cattail stands, wet grassland and flooded savanna, rice fields and mangrove edges. It hunts by slow stalking or motionless waiting, taking fish, frogs, crustaceans, insects and small mammals. When alarmed it points neck and bill straight up and sways with the reeds.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Winter visitor to the Bahamas, Cuba and the Cayman Islands, where it is seen annually. Scarce to rare in Hispaniola, Puerto Rico and the Virgin Islands, and a rare winter visitor or vagrant in the Lesser Antilles, including Sint Maarten, Antigua, Guadeloupe, Martinique and Barbados, and on San Andrés. Outside the region it breeds in Canada and the northern and central United States, and winters in the southern United States, Mexico and Central America.
- Winter visitor (c. Apr–Sep)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Large marshes in Cuba, such as the Ciénaga de Zapata, and freshwater marshes in the Bahamas and on Grand Cayman, in the winter months. Most birds are seen as they flush low over the reeds or as they stalk along a marsh edge at dusk.
Conservation status
Not threatened. In North America the species has declined locally through the loss of wetlands. In the region it depends on freshwater marshes that are under pressure from drainage and development.
Scientific name
Botaurus lentiginosus | (Rackett, 1813)
Rackett described the species in 1813 as Ardea lentiginosa; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Botaurus was introduced in 1819 by Stephens. Botaurus is Medieval Latin for a bittern; the word combines Latin bos 'ox' with taurus 'bull', after the booming call (compare butire 'to boom'). lentiginosus is Latin for 'freckled, speckled', after the brown-flecked plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Puddletown, Dorset, England.