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Dwarf Bittern | Botaurus sturmii
Afrikaanse woudaap | Avetorillo Plomizo
The Dwarf Bittern is a small dark heron that arrives from tropical Africa with the first summer rains and then breeds in newly flooded wooded marshes. Unlike most small bitterns it often perches high in bushes and trees above the water.
Voice
Usually silent. When breeding a series of deep barking or croaking notes, woo-woo-woo-woo, mainly at dusk; when disturbed a hoarse kwek.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
25–30 cm. Upperparts uniform slate-grey to blue-black, without a wing panel. The underparts are pale buff with broad blackish-brown streaks from throat to belly. The eye is red to yellow, the bill dark with a greenish-yellow base, the legs strikingly yellow to orange. The sexes are alike; the female is slightly browner. Juveniles have pale fringes to the upperpart feathers. In flight a small dark heron with plain grey wings and projecting yellow legs.
Confusion species
The Little Bittern Botaurus minutus has a conspicuous pale wing panel contrasting with the dark mantle in flight and at rest. The Striated Heron Butorides striata is larger, with a black cap, grey-green back with pale feather edges and grey underparts without heavy streaks. Juvenile Black Herons and juvenile night herons are larger and differently patterned.
Habitat
Temporary and permanent marshes, flooded thickets, streams and dams with overhanging bushes and trees, also with reed fringes. It often hunts perched on a branch over the water or clambers deftly through the scrub, taking fish, frogs, crabs and insects. The nest is a platform of twigs in a bush or tree above water.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of southern Africa.
Range and movements
A summer visitor to the north and east of the region: northern Namibia (Kavango and Caprivi), northern and eastern Botswana, Zimbabwe, Zambia, Malawi, Mozambique and Angola; in South Africa mainly in Limpopo, the Mpumalanga lowveld, Eswatini and KwaZulu-Natal, rare farther south to the Eastern Cape. It moves north in the dry season and spends May to October in central and western Africa, where it also breeds in places.
- Summer visitor (c. Oct–Mar)
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
After good rains in December and January, at newly flooded pools with bushes in Kruger, the lowveld or Zululand. Scan branches over the water for a slim dark shape with yellow legs; the bird often sits motionless for minutes.
Conservation status
Not threatened and common over its large range, though occurrence varies from year to year with rainfall. The loss of temporary marshes and wooded margins to drainage and farming reduces breeding habitat locally.
Scientific name
Botaurus sturmii | (Wagler, 1827)
Wagler described the species in 1827 as Ardea Sturmii; 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'). sturmii honours the German bird artist Johann Sturm, who supplied Wagler with the specimen. The specimen the first description was based on came from Senegambia.