- Animals
- ›Chordates
- ›Vertebrates
- ›Birds
- ›Pelicans, Herons, Ibises, and Allies
- ›Herons, Egrets, and Bitterns
- ›Bitterns
- ›Botaurus

On eBird ↗
Australasian Bittern
Live sightings near you, the range map, bar charts of when it is seen, and Macaulay Library photos and recordings.
Australasian Bittern
Botaurus poiciloptilus
The Australasian bittern (Botaurus poiciloptilus), also known as the brown bittern or matuku hūrepo, is a large bird in the heron family Ardeidae. A secretive bird with a distinctive booming call, it is more often heard than seen. Australasian bitterns are endangered in both Australia and New Zealand.
Listen
Looking for field recordings…
Where it lives
Recorded sightings
—
geo-referenced records in GBIF, from museums, herbaria and field observers.
Drag the globe to turn it. Dots are where records exist, not a range map; darker means more records.
In the stacks
Searching the stacks…
Every page naming Botaurus poiciloptilus in the Biodiversity Heritage Library →
This page is assembled live from iNaturalist, GBIF, Wikipedia, the Source Library and the Internet Archive. It is not yet part of the hand-edited codex. iNaturalist taxon 5032.