Bittern

The osprey and the sea mew, fly down to catch fish, but the Heron catches them while standing on the banks. The bittern puts its bill into the water and bellows like an ox. The water wagtail wags its tail.

Glorious London! Leviathan of human greed; palpitating hot-bed of iniquity and joy; Greek, Roman, Spanish, Saxon, Kelt, Scot, Pict, Norman and Dane have swept over thee like winter storms; and the mighty Cæsar, Julius of old, with a myriad of bucklered warriors and one hundred galleons of sailors, triple-oared mariners, defying wave and fate, have ploughed the placid face of Father Thames, startling the loud cry of hawk and bittern as his royal prows grated on thy strand, or skimmed over the marshes of thy infancy.

It was a country of wide pastures, of moors covered with heath, of rock-born streams and rivulets, of forest and hill and dale, sparsely inhabited, with the sea to the eastward of it, unseen, and the mountains everywhere visible always, and endlessly changing in aspect. Herdsmen and shepherds wandered over it, and along its almost disused roads pedlars and pack mules passed at times but rarely. Minerals and marbles were under its turf, but none sought for them; pools and lakes slept in it, undisturbed save by millions of water fowl and their pursuers. The ruins of temples and palaces were overgrown by its wild berries and wild flowers. The buffalo browsed where emperors had feasted, and the bittern winged its slow flight over the fields of forgotten battles.

It is a great rock or cliff on the loneliest part of the mountains, and […] is known by the name of the Garden Rock. Near the foot of it is a small lake, the haunt of the solitary bittern, with water-snakes basking in the sun on the leaves of the pond-lilies which lie on the surface.

Now we add the bittern.