(Bittern by Thomas Bewick)

The Butter Bump (from John Clare's notebooks)

This is a thing that makes a very odd noise morning & evening among the flags & large reed shaws in the fens some describe the noise as something like the bellowing of bulls but I have often heard it & cannot liken it to that sound at all it is difficult to describe what it is like its noise has procurd it the above name by the common people the first part of its noise is an indistinct muttering sort of sound very like the word butter utterd in a hurried manner & bump comes very quick after & bumps a sound on the ear as if eccho had mocked the bump of a gun just as the mutter ceasd nay this is not like I have often thought the putting one's mouth to the bung hole of an empty large cask & uttering the word 'butter bump' sharply woud imitiate the sound exactly after its first call that imitates the word 'butter bump' it repeats the sound bump singly several times in a more determined & louder manner--thus 'butter bum/p bu/m/p b/u/m/p butter bum/p' it strikes people at first as something like the sound of a coopers mallet hitting on empty casks when I was a boy this was one of the fen wonders I usd often to go on a sunday with my mother to see my aunt at peakirk when I often wanderd in the fen with the boys a bird nesting & when I enquird what this strange noise was they desribd it as coming from a bird larger then an ox that coud kill all the cattle in the fen if it choose & destroy the villager likewise but that it was very harmless & all the harm it did was the drinking so much water as to nearly empty the dykes in summer & spoil the rest so that the stock coud scarcly drink what it left this was not only a story among chlidern but their parents believd the same thing such is th power of superstition over ignorant people who have no desire to go beyond hearsay & enquire for themselves but 'the world gets wiser every day' tis not believd now nor heard as wonder any longer--they say that it is a small bird that makes the noise not much unlike the quail tho a deal larger & longer on the legs they say it puts its beak in a reed when it makes the noise that gives it that jarring or hollow sound which is heard so far I have no knowledge of its using the reed but I believe they are right in the bird I have startend such a bird myself out of reed shaws myself were I have heard this noise & afterwards the noise has been silent which convincd me that the one was the bird I never saw but on the wing & it appeard to me larger than a pheasant of a li( ) & not unlike it in either shape or colour but it flew different--there is a great many of these birds on whittlesea mere & their noise is easily heard in the morning on the London road which is some miles distant its noise continues all summer & at the latter end of the year it is silent & hear no more till summer