mapDISTRIBUTION AND MOVEMENTS Only two subspecies are recognized, Botaurus stellaris stellaris (Linnaeus) and Botaurus stellaris capensis (Schlegel). The breeding range of B. s. stellaris extends from southern England, Sweden and Finland, east to 57'N in the Urals and 5 9'@-64'N in Siberia (where a still more northern. population may breed along the coast), to Sakhalin and Hokkaido in Japan, south to northern Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Turkey, Iran, Afghanistan, Mongolia and northern China (Hopeh). This subspecies winters from western and central Europe to northern tropical Africa, the Black Sea, the Caspian Sea, Iran, Iraq, the east coast of Arabia, Pakistan, northern India, China and Japan. It has wandered farther south to southern India, Burma, the Malay Peninsula, Taiwan and the Philippines. B. s. capensis forms a small, isolated and sedentary population in eastern South Africa. Not all European Bitterns are migratory. The autumn migration begins with the first hard night frost in late September, and continues until December. The spring migration begins in February. In England, the Nether- lands and western France, the bulk of the population is sedentary during even the hardest winters. Of 17 birds ringed in the Netherlands and recovered between 1924 and 1953, 13 were recorded in the Netherlands and only 4 abroad, 3 in western France in the autumn and I in northern Germany in the summer (Bannerman 1957). A study of recoveries made in central Europe (Zink 1958) shows a southward and westward trend in autumn and winter, and a northward and eastward trend in spring. In Finland and Sweden, the whole population migrates south in autumn, even though during unusually mild winters some individuals may stay in southern Sweden. Recoveries of Bitterns ringed in Sweden have been made along the west coast of Europe from Denmark to Spain (Broberg, in Curry-Lindahl 1959). Thus wintering birds flying west and southwest come to Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, England, Belgium and France, while others flying a more southerly route reach Greece, Italy and Spain. In all these countries, the migrating Bitterns mceet a 'Iready well-established sedentary populations. Birds wintering in Iran and Iraq are of unknown origin, as are those wintering on both sides of the eastern part of the Mediterranean Sea. Most probably, many of these birds come from the USSR. One bird ringed in Greece on 3 February 1968 was found in the USSR near Koursk on the 10 August 1968 (Paris Ringing Centre).

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