The bittern is one of the rarest breeding birds in the UK. It is golden-brown in colour, rather plump, related to the heron and inhabits freshwater reed beds and other wetland environments. They feed on small vertebrates, chiefly fish but also amphibians and small mammals. The male bittern has a loud, booming call that can be heard over a mile away. They are decidedly rare in Warwickshire but several have regularly wintered in the north of the county in recent years.
Remarkably, a bittern was spotted on a rooftop in the centre of Warwick on Christmas Eve, 2009. We’d suffered some very cold, icy weather and it’s likely that birds such as this bittern were having to venture further afield to find fish. This is the only photo I managed to take of this interesting bird before it flew off; not great but the best I could do from a bedroom window with the camera I had to hand. You can see the Albert Street fire station (now demolished) in the background. Also note the frost on the roof. The weather was absolutely freezing!
The sighting even made it into the national papers. This report on Warwickshire’s ‘scarcest visitor’ is from the Kenilworth Weekly News.
There are conservation measures in place to protect these rare birds in our county. The Local Biodiversity Action Plan can be accessed here.
Comments
Your article persuaded me to read up on bitterns, and I didn’t realise quite how rare they were! A Guardian article tells me only 11 in Britain in 1997, so for one to visit your area really is remarkable!
I neglected to mention that we have a bittern on display in the Market Hall Museum; within our Spicer display of taxidermy (1st floor natural history gallery).
Wow, I have never seen a Bittern in real life. I shall keep my eye out now. They are usually very secretive, hiding away in reed beds I believe. I did discover a female pheasant sitting on my fence in Warwick near Emscote Road at Christmas time which i was very suprised to see. Perhaps it had made an escape from someone’s kitchen!
It looks like a hoax to me…
Definitely not a hoax! I took the photo myself from a bedroom window at home. The bird landed on the roof of the flats situated between Victoria St and Albert St in Warwick. I apologise for the poor photo; I grabbed the first camera I could and it was very early in the morning on a grey winter day. The Bittern stayed for quite a while before disappearing. At first I thought it might be injured as it was so still.
I have a book somewhere which I purchased around 1986, detailing wildlife in and around the Warwick area, and it reports that in the 1970s booming Bitterns (and therefore likely to be breeding) were often heard around the New Waters area (near the road) in Castle Park.
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