Last Sunday was just about the most perfect spring day, especially for a birder. Bright, sunny, temperatures in the 70s … no bugs yet … and a great sighting of an elusive wetland bird that is more often heard than seen.

I had gone for a brisk walk along the University of Maine bike path, bringing my binoculars with me and doing some birding along the way. When I reached the small wetland along the Witter Farm Road, I heard the distinctive vocalizations of an American bittern. As I turned the corner onto the road and peered across the wetland, I was surprised to see the bird in plain view.

Usually these birds conceal themselves in thick vegetation, but the wetland was still showing the effects of the mild winter and the relatively dry spring; there was nothing to hide behind. Last year’s cattails were bent and broken, adding their substance to the mounds of other dead, soggy, yellowed marsh plants. The marsh was a tan monochrome, which made the bittern stand out even more.

The bird seemed to realize how exposed it was; it alternately gave its signature vocalization and assumed its characteristic posture when alarmed: it stretched its long neck up, pointing its beak at the sky, and stood frozen. Normally this is an effective camouflage against the background of tall grasses, but this only made him stand out even more. Then, when the bird seemed reassured no danger was near, it resumed its vocalizations.

I had never seen a bittern vocalizing before. It looked exactly what it sounded like – as if the bird were noisily swallowing air in big gulps. “Gunk-a-lunk… glunk-a-lunk,” he repeated over and over, sometimes varying this with only emitting the first part of the “song” – glunk… glunk… glunk,” accompanied by small clicking sounds. The vocalization would start first with the bird in a half-crouch; it would open its beak, take a big gulp – “glunk!” – expanding the base of its throat; then seem to “swallow” its voice as the base of his neck expanded, making the feathers ruff out – “a-lunk!” The action made the bird look as if it were having a convulsion – a very odd sight.

The “Birds of North America” species account has an interesting -if shameful- anecdote regarding this bird’s bizarre vocalization. A researcher had apparently come across a reference to the bittern in the Bible, which portrays the birds as “denizens of desolate places … long been associated with evil.” Because of this, “100 men gathered in a small Connecticut town on a Sabbath day in 1786 to rid nearby swamps of the much dreaded American Bittern.”

Although misguided actions such as this are no longer as big a threat to the birds (one would hope, anyway), habitat loss and degradation are the two biggest factors affecting these birds today. Overall populations have been in decline since the mid-1980s due to the destruction of more than half of the wetlands in the contiguous United States.

On a lighter note, I’d like to share something with you that a reader sent in to me. Ruth French of Dover-Foxcroft had received an article from friends wintering in Florida and kindly passed it on.

The piece, which ran in the Naples Daily News, detailed the story of a great horned owl nesting near the property of Sugar and Sam Rubin last spring. The nest contained two downy chicks that had recently hatched, but it was blown down one windy night, leaving the owlets without a home. Rubin called the Conservancy of Southwest Florida, which sent people out to pick up the slightly injured young owls. Once conservancy workers determined the chicks could be released, they returned the owls to a new nest they had prepared: a laundry basket, secured to the trunk and branches of their nest-tree by bungee cords.

The basket proved to be a perfect artificial nest, and the parents successfully raised the two chicks to fledging. This year, the owls have returned to nest once again – in the laundry basket.

After being barraged with news about habitat loss, degradation, and exploitation of the natural world, it’s stories such as these that restore my faith in human beings. And it’s a perfect spring story – full of the promise and potential of change.

Perhaps there is hope for the bittern – and its habitat – after all.

BDN bird columnist Chris Corio can be reached at bdnsports@bangordailynews.net