Cinnamon Bittern

 Cinnamon Bittern (Ixubrychus cinnamomeus) is one of the common breeding visitors in northern Thailand. They can be frequently seen while flying over wetlands and rice fields during wet season, but proved to be quite difficult to find when on the ground. 

The cinnamon bittern or chestnut bittern is a small Old World bittern, breeding in tropical and subtropical Asia from India east to China and Indonesia. It is mainly resident, but some northern birds migrate short distances.

Despite the brightly coloured plumage, the male Cinnamon Bittern is, interestingly, more often seen than the female. The female is usually more secretive and seldom come out to feed in the open unlike the male. During wet season,  the males walking around in open rice fields looking for various types of food including amphibians, small fish and insects. The females, however, are mostly seen in grassy areas and mostly seen when flushed from dense cover.

Female Cinnamon Bittern has duller plumage with pale buffish spots on wing coverts and dark streaks on the neck.

Description

It is a small species at 38 cm (15 in) length, though it is one of the larger Ixobrychus bitterns. Possessing a short neck and longish bill, the male is uniformly cinnamon above and buff below. The female is similar but her back and crown are brown, and the juvenile is like the female but heavily streaked brown below. When surprised on its nest or concerned, it assumes the characteristic attitude of bitterns, termed the on-guard. The neck is stretched perpendicularly, bill pointing skyward, while the bird freezes and becomes very hard to see among the surrounding reeds.

Behavior

The cinnamon bittern breeds in reed beds, nesting on platforms of reeds in shrubs. Four to six eggs are laid. The species can be difficult to see, given their skulking lifestyle and reed bed habitat, but tend to emerge at dusk, when they can be seen creeping almost cat-like in search of frogs. Cinnamon bitterns feed on insects, fish and amphibians.