Least Bittern

The least bittern (Botaurus exilis) is a small heron, the smallest member of the family Ardeidae found in the Americas. This species was formerly placed in the genus Ixobrychus. == Taxonomy == The least bittern was formally described in 1789 by the German naturalist Johann Friedrich Gmelin in his revised and expanded edition of Carl Linnaeus's Systema Naturae. He placed it with the herons, cranes, storks, and bitterns in the genus Ardea and coined the binomial name Ardea exilis. Gmelin based his description on the "minute bittern" from Jamaica that had been included by the English ornithologist John Latham in his multi-volume work A General Synopsis of Birds. Latham did not specify how he had obtained the specimen. The least bittern was formerly placed in the genus Ixobrychus but when a molecular phylogenetic study of the heron family Ardeidae published in 2023 found that Ixobrychus was paraphyletic, Ixobrychus was merged into the genus Botaurus that had been introduced in 1819 by the English naturalist James Francis Stephens. The genus name Botaurus is Medieval Latin for a bittern. The specific epithet exilis is Latin meaning "little" or "slender". Six subspecies are recognised: B. e. exilis (Gmelin, JF, 1789) – Breeding: east…