Northern Observations of Inland Birds 69 



a retriever which one day brought a living nightjar in 

 its jaws to him. He took it, uninjured, from the dog's 

 mouth, and placed it on the gravel path. The bird 

 crouched a moment, then immediately returned to its 

 nest, which was at the foot of the garden not forty yards 

 away, and from which the dog had no doubt Hfted it. 

 I might have been inclined to disbelieve this story but that 

 the old fellow, who could neither read nor write, and 

 whose memory lives in my mind among the kindliest of 

 recollections, was too unsophisticated to lie, and knew 

 too much about wild life for such futility to appeal to 

 him as worth while. Years later I read St. John's story 

 of a retriever lifting a partridge from her nest — a strangely 

 parallel case. 



Again in my early boyhood my brother and I were 

 climbing a tree which I believe was an acacia, though 

 evidently a thornless one. Looking down I saw some- 

 thing which held my attention for some seconds. I said 

 to my brother : '* I believe that is a nightjar resting on 

 the branch below us." 



He answered : *' No, it is a mushroom " (meaning, 

 I suppose, a fungus). 



Just then the bird looked up at us, and all doubt was 

 settled. We had climbed past it, stepping on the branch 

 within a yard of it, yet it had not taken fright during our 

 noisy rambles all about its resting place ! 



In France, during the war, I one day saw a nightjar 

 seated on the hot railway metals within a mile of our own 

 artillery. I said to my friend : ** That bird will be killed 

 next time the tacco comes along." 



We walked up to it. Its eyes were shut, but it opened 

 them as I reached down to clutch it. My hand was within 

 a few inches of it when it fluttered off and tried to settle 

 on the edge of a sheet of upturned corrugated iron. Failing 

 in this it fluttered feebly to earth, and there we left it — so 



