154 BIRDS, BEASTS, AND FISHES 



They are fond of the same locahty, and will return year 

 after year to the same neighbourhood, though their eggs 

 and young are seldom found. 



But this strong, slim, simple bird, with the colours of the 

 night — lilac with the setting sun diffused through it — is 

 seen at his best as he hawks — like a dumb machine — at 

 closing-in time, or at dawn over the reed-beds, flying low 

 over the gladen or reeds, darting quickly at the yellow 

 underwing moths he feeds upon, or hawking up and down, 

 filling his crop with midges, after the manner of black-headed 

 gulls or terns ; indeed, in the dusk it is difficult to tell which 

 of them is hawking in the pure air above the reeds; but 

 directly you startle him, and he gives voice to his peculiar 

 startled cry, you recognise him to be the loud-mouthed 

 night-hawk ; nor will any artifice lure him to you, for he 

 is wiser than the owl, of spurious reputation. And after 

 his meal he goes to roost in the gladen, and later, when 

 the flight shooters turn out for full flappers, the night- 

 hawk will be their companion, hawking close to their guns 

 for moths, until the winter equinox blows them across the 

 sea, leaving a strong young bird here and there late into 

 November. 



A lover of chimneys, too, is the night-hawk, and when 

 walking along the coast you may see them flying round 

 quaint old chimney-stacks in a gale, awaiting a fair wind 

 to waft them across the grey sea, where he will resume 

 his churning whilst hawking as well as whilst sitting on 

 the ground — for he gives voice during both acts — using 

 his "big wheel" and his " Httle wheel," as the Broadsmen 

 distinguish the two kinds of churning for which he is noted, 

 noises to be heard all through the short summer nights. 

 A mysterious bird of night, bearing the sombre colours of 

 the reed and the night upon his body, and bearing in his 

 record the legend of goat-sucker, the etymology of which 

 I think is at fault, unless, indeed, the goat-hawk moth was 

 meant, and the bird originally called "goat-hawk sucker," 



