{"id":4047,"date":"2005-02-21T15:02:45","date_gmt":"2005-02-21T20:02:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/?p=4047"},"modified":"2023-03-01T21:42:14","modified_gmt":"2023-03-02T02:42:14","slug":"thunder-pumps","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/archives\/4047","title":{"rendered":"thunder-pumps"},"content":{"rendered":"<blockquote><p>A bittern. A wading-bird of Europe, related to the herons, called Botaurus bulgaris. It has long legs and neck, and stalks among reeds and sedge, feeding upon fish. It makes a singular noise, called by Dryden bumping, and by Goldsmith booming. Other species also of the genus are called bittern.  \u2014 Webster, 1882<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"thunder-pump\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/thunderpump01.gif\" align=\"right\"\/><span style=\"float: left; color: #6384bd; font-size: 44px; line-height: 35px; padding-top: 3px; padding-right: 3px; font-family: Times, serif, Georgia;\">I<\/span> finished reading <em>Little Town on the Prairie<\/em> for the eleventy-seventh time yesterday, and I made note of a couple of things that I honestly didn\u2019t remember from other readings. Laura Ingalls Wilder\u2019s mention of \u201cthunder-pumps\u201d was one of them: see Chapter 5, \u201cWorking in Town.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>The thunderpump or thunder-pump is the American Bittern (<em>Botaurus lentiginosus<\/em>), an endangered species of the heron family. They inhabit wet, marshy areas \u2013 like the Big Slough \u2013 and their song is described as a booming \u201cooooom-a-lunk\u201d that carries for long distances.<\/p>\n<p>You can Google to hear the call of the American Bittern. Montana Fish, Wildlife, &amp; Parks has a wav file linked to their online field guide. After listening to the call, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever heard one at the Big Slough all the times I\u2019ve been there (and all the nights I\u2019ve spent on the Ingalls homestead). But there are recently-taken photos online of bitterns in Brookings, so hopefully they\u2019re still hanging out in De Smet as well.<\/p>\n<p><img decoding=\"async\" alt=\"\" src=\"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/tbl_book.gif\"\/><br \/>\n<strong>thunder-pumps<\/strong> (LTP 5)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>American bittern, a member of the heron family.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7973,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[627],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4047"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4047"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4047\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":15225,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4047\/revisions\/15225"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/7973"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4047"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4047"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.pioneergirl.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4047"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}