Activity Sheet - Make a Booming Bittern

Bitterns are very secretive birds and when they “freeze” the striped markings on their neck make them very difficult to see against a background of dead reed. In springtime, bitterns are best recognised by the distinctive territorial booming call of the male. Although this strange noise is not particularly loud, it is far carrying and may be heard up to three miles away, most frequently at dusk, in April or May.

Your bittern will be standing with its head back and its beak pointing to the sky, the posture males adopt when booming!

To make a bittern you will need:

• Small plastic fizzy drink bottle
• Newspaper
• Moist teabags (or a pot of strong tea and some sponges)
• Glue
• Scissors
• Sticky tape
• Pale yellow card
• Orange and black pencils

1. Wipe the tea over the sheets of newspaper and leave to dry. This will become the bittern's mottled golden brown plumage. Take care not to wet the paper too much or it will rip.

2. Cut out the beak, feet and eyes from pale yellow card, scaling the templates up or down according to the size of your bottle. Only the toes should peep out from under the bottle, not the circular base. Colour the eyes with the orange and black pencils and add markings to the beak and feet.

3. Use sticky tape to fix a collar of newspaper around the belly of the bottle to fix the feathers to.

4. When the paper is dry cut out feathers and stick them onto the body with glue. Start sticking at the bottom so that the upper feathers overlap the lower ones. Use darker feathers (e.g cut from photographs in the newspaper) along the back and smaller, paler feathers on the belly. Try to include the white stripes on the neck.

5. Fix the two beak pieces around the lip of the bottle, at the front and back. Make sure it is still possible to blow across the neck of the bottle to make the bittern boom.

6. Add the eyes and fix the feet to the base of the bottle with glue or a folded loop of sticky tape.

Template for bittern's feet - cut out from pale yellow card

Bring your booming bittern to life by blowing across the top of the bottle, between the open beak. It should make an eerie booming sound.

Bitterns are now limited almost entirely to lowland marshes, dominated by common reed, in Suffolk, Norfolk and Lancashire. Some do overwinter in Cheshire. In 1994, numbers had declined to only 15 or 16 booming males, from a peak of 70 pairs in the late 1960's. Since then numbers have recovered, in 2004 55 booming males were counted at 30 different sites.

The main problems for bitterns are the shortage of suitable large reed-beds and degradation of their habitat and food supply (particularly eels) through water pollution, pesticide and heavy metal pollution and salt water intrusion into coastal reed-beds. Reed-beds which can support bitterns are great for a range of other wildlife including fish, water voles and marsh harriers.