Night-Jars at Home and Abroad 



protectively-coloured birds. In such cases the 

 point to look for is the eye. I remember picking 

 an almost invisible woodcock out of a very perfect 

 photograph in this way ; but the woodcock is a 

 proverbial fool, and the wiser night-jar keeps its 

 eyes nearly shut even at the early age when it 

 still wears a downy coat. 



Some of these birds at the later age evidently 

 believed in the Virgilian adage, " niniium ne crede 

 eolori" for they actually allowed themselves to 

 be shifted on to a bare piece of ground to give 

 the camera a better chance of displaying their 

 beauties. And young night-jars are not by any 

 means helpless, for they can run even in the 

 downy stage, although they are fed by the 

 parents, very much after the fashion of pigeons, 

 except that the young take the old one's beak 

 in their mouths, as has been made out by that 

 untiring observer of our wild creatures, Mr. 

 Edmund Selous. 



Night-jars much resembling our own are found 



almost everywhere, but the family, as might be 



inferred from the habits of its members, is mainly 



a tropical one, and comparatively few are found 



in temperate regions, these being, of course, 



migratory, like our bird. Like the cuckoos, 



another tropical family with colonists in the 



colder parts of the world, they are remarkable 



for the variety of the notes of the different 



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