Geoscience Reference
In-Depth Information
Whoever has heard the occult, resonant gong of this baroque fowl beaten from
the reeds on a still May evening, as I have heard it, will realize that a new
mastery of interpretation has been given to the watery landscape of Broadland.
(Massingham 1924:116)
Since the early twentieth century efforts have been made to restore or to maintain
the bittern as a breeding rather than simply visiting bird, the assumption being that
it belongs, and that the place lacks something without it. Jim Vincent, keeper at
Hickling, successfully reinstated the bird after it chose to nest in 1910 after decades
absent from the region (Matless 1994; Vincent 1926). Anthony Buxton, owner of
the Horsey estate adjacent to Hickling, recorded the bittern's habits in prose and
photography, his 1946
Fisherman Naturalist
describing the bird's movements and
noises, and showing the bittern feeding its young, emerging from reeds, and going
through 'various stages of powder puffing' (Buxton 1946: 150-155; 1948). This is
not, however, a straightforward story of a bird happy to be in its place. The
unpredictable bittern is liable to fly off elsewhere, as birds do, leaving the region
without its elected symbol for a year or more, and the creature is hard for even the
most dedicated conservationist to cater for; as Buxton (1950: 109) put it: 'There is
no fathoming a bittern's brain.' The bittern is symbolically eccentric, like some of
its local caring humans.
If there is unanimity concerning the bittern's regional value, there are telling
differences between figures such as Day and Ellis in their presentation of the bird. Day,
for whom the bittern was 'the bird-spirit of these haunting solitudes' (Day 1953:
150; 1946:164-7), hailed its restoration as a vindication of the sporting estate. The
threat to the bird comes in part from misguided gunners—Day told of sportsmen
mistaking it for a goose and taking aim (Day 1953:150)—but more from bird-
watchers. Day (1967:186-187) offered a warning story of a bittern in Holland
having its nest trampled by bird-watchers whose 'sheep-like mentality' drew them to
gawp at the creature; the bird chooses to go elsewhere. The relationship of bird to
holiday-maker in Day's work is more complex: '[T]wo summers ago, I saw a bittern
rise from a reed-bed opposite…and fly with the utmost unconcern, over a whole
flotilla of yachts and motor-boats, which were taking part in an extremely noisy
regatta' (Day 1953:97). While this anecdote could be taken to imply a happy
coexistence of bird and boaters, in Day's terms the interpretation is more likely one
of a resilient animal, part of a deep local ecology, enduring despite the messy and
passing surface ecology of cruising. The bittern becomes a figure of ecological
stoicism, akin to the cow noted by Day in
Portrait of the Broads:
'I have known a
cow swallow a plastic mackintosh and pass it entire out of her system' (Day 1967:
208).
If for Day the bittern was threatened by an ignorant audience, for Ellis and others
the task was to take the bittern, and especially its symbolic sound, to new audiences,
in part via radio. The bittern was one of Percy Edwards's 153 talents, and on
Woman's Hour
he mimicked the bird: '[P]erhaps the strangest of all bird voices
