Yellow Bittern

The yellow bittern is a small bittern, 36 to 38cm long, with a short neck, longish bill, yellow-green legs and yellow irises. Males have a dark cap and chestnut head and neck above a dull yellow body, while females and young birds are streaked, the young more boldly. It lives in freshwater marshes and swamps and eats insects, fish, amphibians, crustaceans and molluscs (Wikipedia, general species account).

It builds a small platform of reeds or twigs in reed beds or nearby trees and shrubs, laying four to six pale blue-green eggs. It breeds from the northern Indian subcontinent east to the Russian Far East, Japan and Indonesia, is mostly resident, and some northern birds make short migrations. A 2023 study moved it from Ixobrychus into Botaurus. The source does not name Nepal (Wikipedia, general species account).