American Bittern (Botaurus lentiginosus)

County List:

Rule:

Forested or Nonforested Landscapes

      Marsh 2 
      or Sedge Meadow 
      or Lowland Brush 
      or (Bog and Lowland Brush)

Habitat List:

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Literature:

Habitat: This marsh resident usually is found in Michigan's bigger marshes and along lake and pond edges where cattails, sedges, or bulrushes are plentiful. It also occurs in shrubby marshes, bogs, wet meadows, and rarely, hayfields. Both wetland and upland sites are characterized by dense herbaceous cover. The nests are elevated platforms of reeds, cattails, sedges, and grasses placed in shallow water or sometimes on land. Dense vegetation around the nest normally conceals the three to five eggs.

Habitat: Breeding: Fresh water marshes, meadows, swamps and bogs, especially areas having tall vegetation such as cattails and bulrushes, sluggish rivers and streams with dense border vegetation. Wintering: Coastal wetlands.

Special Habitat Requirements: Tall marsh vegetation such as cattail and bulrushes in areas with little or no human disturbance.

Habitat: Marshes, reedy lakes. Breeds in freshwater marshes, mainly large, shallow wetlands with much tall marsh vegetation (cattails, grasses, sedges) and areas of open shallow water. Winters in similar areas, also in brackish coastal marshes. Sometimes feeds in dry grassy fields.

Diet: Mostly fish and other aquatic life. Eats fish (including catfish, eels, killifish, perch) frogs, tadpoles, aquatic insects, crayfish, crabs, salamanders, garter snakes. Has been seen catching flying dragonflies. In drier habitats may eat rodents especially voles.

Nest: Site is usually in dense marsh growth above shallow water, sometimes on dry ground among dense grasses. Nest is a platform of grasses, reeds, cattails, lined with fine grasses.