Written by Samantha Holschbach
While kayaking a deep lake, you veer closer to a dense bed of cattails lining the bank and listen to a cacophony of creatures: bullfrogs lazily humming, Red-winged Blackbirds scolding each other and crickets rhythmically chirping. As you scan the cattails hoping to gain better looks at the blackbirds, you notice that one of the swaying cattails has eyes — they’re pointed directly at you on either side of the stalk—then the “cattail” gingerly alters its form, revealing its true identity as a Least Bittern.
As North America’s smallest heron, the Least Bittern is indeed the least of its contemporaries as well as the least seen in its hard-to-reach habitat of expansive marshes with high vegetation. Offering some pointers for finding this secretive species, Dick Baxter, breeding bird survey coordinator for Arkansas, noted that this bittern often “flies quickly and then plops down into cattails.” When in flight, it remains low near cattail tops.
“Good spots to look include any large cattail marshes,” Baxter said. He mentioned that cattail marshes on the Arkansas River are good spots in addition to rice fields where they are flushed from combines. Moreover, Baxter noted that Wallace Land Trust, soon to be a new wildlife management area in Desha County, has a decent bittern population.
Least Bitterns appear in only a few Arkansas locations between April and early October. Before you try to spy one — an patience-trying undertaking — perhaps your best bet is to listen for its common “rick-rick-rick” call and then proceed to catch this magician masquerading as a cattail.
