Bittern breaking cover
Botaurus stellaris
Eurasian Bittern · Stodmarsh · 2 May 2026
A Bittern in flight over the water at Stodmarsh in May, skimming low rather than picking through the reeds. Bitterns are birds of big reedbeds and nothing else, and Stodmarsh is one of the places the species came back to after the British population fell to a handful of booming males in the 1990s, on the strength of reedbed restoration.
A booming call carried on still air for over a kilometre is normally the only sign a bittern gives of itself even where it is fairly common, and an actual flight view like this one is the exception rather than the rule. The streaked brown plumage that hides it so well in the reeds looks almost owl-like in the air.
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