A STRANGE NEST 179 



(the third common variety) seldom fly more than fif- 

 teen or twenty feet high. The nighthawk has long slender 

 wings and a rapid flight. As he flies over us we can 

 easily distinguish a white half moon on the under side 

 of the wings. This bird is accustomed to make a dive 

 sidewise or downward for an insect, when the rush of the 

 air through the wing feathers produces a sort of half 

 groan and half grunt, which is loud enough to be heard 

 several hundred feet away. At such times he is probably 

 darting after prey. 



Nighthawks are common along the Atlantic coast and 

 have been observed to follow boats several miles out to sea. 

 Their main food is June bugs, grasshoppers, and the like. 

 The nighthawk has no song. In color it is somewhat 

 similar to the whippoorwill. The mother bird builds 

 no nest but lays her eggs either on the bare ground or on 

 on a bare flat rock about one hundred and fifty yards 

 from my house. She selected a rock that was about her 

 a bare flat rock. In 1921 a nighthawk raised her family 

 own color and there she would sit even tho we came 

 within eight or ten feet of her. 



One spring I was visiting a Mr. Louie Schmidt near 

 Bonaparte, Iowa. He lived on a farm not far from the 

 Bes Moines Eiver, and as there was considerable brush 

 and timber on the place the whippoorwills were abun- 

 dant. One night when the moon was full and the whip- 

 poorwills were whistling on every hand, we decided to try 

 to see a bird as he whistled. "We crept across the pasture 

 to the border of a field full of hazel brush till we stopped 

 within twenty feet of where the bird was, and there I saw 

 something for the first and only time — a whippoorwill 

 lying flat on his side in an open place in the brush whis- 



