Bittern

Botaurus stellaris (Linnaeus, 1758)

Name in other languages

The Eurasian Bittern is a rare resident of water-edge habitats in the south of Central Siberia whose numbers are further decreasing. An inhabitant of large bodies of water in steppes and forest-steppes, it also appears both in taiga and montane areas but does not penetrate deeply into either. It was observed in summer on the Yenisey River north of the mouth of the Kas River at 60° N in southern taiga (Bursky and Vakhrushev 1983), and Chernikov found an individual in eastern Evenkia in the summer 1986 on the Nizhnyaya Tunguska River near Yukta (63° N, mid taiga). On May 30, 1981, V.I. Marunin, a worker in the Central Siberian Reserve, collected a specimen near the mouth of the Sukhoy Yeloguy River at 63°20' N. There is a record of a vagrant even farther north: H. Seebohm (1901) received a study skin of a bird collected on the Yenisey near 64° N in northern taiga.

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