Brian Morland, of East Tanfield, near Ripon, who runs the Bellflask Ecological Survey Team with his wife Susan, tells of a close encounter with a Bittern

SINCE October last year I have been very fortunate to see Bitterns nearly every day right through the winter.

Sometimes it is just a fleeting glance as I disturb the bird from vegetation as I walk around the site and see it fly over the reeds to drop into cover. Other times I have been able to sit and watch a bird for a long period.

I live on the restored area of a quarry site and have been involved with habitat creation and monitoring for the last 25 years.

In 2007 I stocked the reedbed with 12,000 Roach and Perch from the Environment Agency hatchery at Calverton near Nottingham. Within two weeks a Bittern appeared. Since then, the fish have flourished and we have recorded Bittern every year and they have bred at least once, even when the quarry was active.

This winter there are at least three Bittern in and around the reedbed area. On 28th January I was sitting quietly alongside one of the larger reedbeds when I noticed a Short-eared Owl appear hunting over the top of the reeds. As the Owl drew alongside to where I was sitting, a Bittern burst up from the edge of the reedbed directly in front of me and attacked the Owl. I had not seen the Bittern even though it was right on the edge of the reeds. It all happened so quickly, I did not have time to grab the camera before the Owl flew off and the Bittern dropped back into the reeds. It showed how aggressive Bittern can be and reminded me of a very unique experience with a Bittern eight years ago in the same reedbed.

It was the day before Christmas Eve 2010. I was in the “Naughty House” compiling the Lepidoptera Report for the Ripon Quarry site which is being restored as a conservation area. The “Naughty House” is, in fact, a large hut on steel legs which used to be the old weighbridge for the Quarry. The Quarry company donated the hut to be used as a field study centre whilst the site is being restored for wildlife. From the outside, the hut looks very similar to the huts depicted in the old television series M.A.S.H.

The Quarry located the hut alongside one of the restored lakes, overlooking a reedbed. Electricity was provided, with heaters inside the hut. The original Avery scales for weighing up to 30 tons are still in place. I have installed a carpet, tables, storage cabinets, bookcases and a radio/music centre. There is no telephone and I do not have a mobile phone, so I can work with absolutely no interruptions.

The name "Naughty House" came from my wife, who tells unwanted phone callers who ask for me that I've been a very naughty boy and have been sent to the "Naughty House".

I glanced out of the window across the frozen lake to the reedbed beyond. The low-angled sunlight was glistening off all the pure white surfaces. There in front of me, where the ice on the lake met the shallow snow-covered ridge that separated it from the reedbed, was the unmistakable form of a Bittern sunning itself. I had glimpsed this bird fleetingly for several days, but here it was out in the open in broad daylight.

I did not possess a high-powered telephoto lens used by bird photographers, so I had to approach as close as I could from behind the bird if I wanted any pictures.

I climbed into my one-piece thermal winter survival suit and walked out of sight of the Bittern to approach from the reedbed area. It had been severe weather for three weeks and all the water bodies on the site were frozen solid. I stepped onto the ice surrounding the reedbed and began to crawl on my belly very slowly along the snow-covered ice towards the ridge, beyond which the Bittern was sitting. It took me a long time to reach the ridge behind the Bittern and I fully expected the bird to have disappeared. Very slowly, I inched my prostrate body up the ridge and peeked over the top. To my delight, the Bittern was still sunning itself only 3 metres in front of me. As I started taking pictures, the Bittern turned, stood up and glared at me. What happened next took me totally by surprise. Instead of taking flight, the bird raised the black feathers in its crown like a Mohican hair do and erected all the feathers around its neck, so that they formed a large ruff. Turning towards me, the bird stuck its long neck out and began swaying its head from side to side and making loud hissing noises. I had set the camera to a fast shutter speed, fully expecting to be lucky if I managed a couple of pictures as the bird took off.

Instead, the bird came menacingly towards me, swaying and hissing all the time. I just lay there, looking up, as its head came down and the Bittern grabbed the lens hood of the camera in its beak. It felt rather like Michael Parkinson’s encounter with Rod Hull’s Emu. The Bittern let go of the lens hood and then took off vertically over my body to land behind me on the snow-covered ice, before walking into the reedbed clucking angrily.

I just lay there for several minutes, not really believing what had just happened. In front of me in the snow was a perfect snow angel, created by the wings of the Bittern as it lifted vertically into the air.

Back in the “Naughty House” I had a good look at the pictures and reflected what had happened. From a nice comfy hide at Leighton Moss, or some other reserve, it would be possible to get technically far better pictures, but never with the interaction with wildlife as the pictures I had just taken. I had, after all, just been bitten by a Bittern and managed to take a photograph of the bird’s epiglottis.