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Index of Subjects Question for birders in these slow times: we are not seeing much of anything except squirrels, at our feeders at Halifax. Over Xmas, we visited the family of a friend of my daughter's near Hubbards. The friend's mum told me that earlier she had accidentally killed an unusual bird back in May while driving along highway 3 near a tidal salt marsh area, close to Boutiliers Point, approx 7200 section. The bird seemed to be behaving oddly, fluttering around, as she drove by and that it suddenly shot in front of her car and she had no chance to avoid it. She stopped and took the dead bird home and reckoned that it best fit the description of a least bittern, according their Audubon bird guide. When I got home I looked this up on the Sibley maps and it seems that a least bittern would be only a vagrant this far north, but it's not clear (to me) if that makes it exceedingly rare and a really interesting find, or merely rather irregular and of no major interest to birders. The point is that that the corpse still exists -- she preserved it in her freezer. Her question to me was what to do with it, usefully. I commented that it might be useful first to ask people on this network (1) whether a possible least bittern is sufficiently interesting to get someone competent to check the ID, somehow; (2) is a frozen, dead (possible) least bittern useful for anyone to have a present of -- e.g. I recall that Randy Lauf once collected specimens for an intro biology class at StFX. (May 2006 probably means past the due date for a bittern stew). The description I have is that "it is soft black on the back and rich golden brown on the front and has yellow legs". Didn't see it myself. She's just got back to me and suggested that she could photo the corpse, and I guess I could put up the resulting photo on the Flickr site for inspection. Before going to this bother, I'd like to know if it is a sufficiently interesting bird to make this worthwhile. Anyone have suggestions or comments? Steve (Halifax)
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