190 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



I have been unable to learn anything about the molts of either 

 young or adults, but Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1908) says that a speci- 

 men in Juvenal plumage, "taken August 22, shows many feathers of 

 the full adult plumage in the throat and breast. The juvenal plum- 

 age is characterized by having the throat patch buff and the back 

 conspicuously mixed with cinnamon-rufus." 



A young male, collected by Van Tyne and Sutton (193Y) in Brew- 

 ster County, Tex., on May 25, was in the midst of the post juvenal 

 molt; "the crown is uniform gray, without any suggestion of a dark 

 central patch, the feathers being only lightly speckled with black. 

 * * * The chest lacks entirely the black patch and band, the feath- 

 ers being lightly and indistinctly tipped with tawny and whitish." 



The so-called frosted poorwill {nitidus) is now regarded as merely 

 a color phase of nuttalli. 



Food. — The food of the poorwill consists, so far as it appears by 

 the data available, entirely of insects, mostly the smaller, night- 

 flying species, such as moths, beetles, chinch bugs, and locusts. 

 Mrs. Bailey (1928) says that "in one stomach, 80 per cent of the 

 contents was grasshoppers and locusts," Many of these insects are 

 caught on the wing in the capacious mouths of these birds, but many 

 are also picked up on the ground. 



Dr. R. W. Shufeldt (1885) noticed a poorwill "apparently amusing 

 himself by making short jumps of two feet or more up in the air, 

 then resting on the road to repeat the performance in a moment or so. 

 Another was going through similar capers on the broad walk. They 

 seemed to be perfectly oblivious to my presence, and, indeed, some 

 children further along were trying to catch them with their hands." 

 He shot one of the birds, and "was much surprised to find in its mouth 

 some four or five quite sizable moths, and the upper portion of the 

 oesophagus was filled with a wad of a dozen or fifteen more. Fully 

 half of these were yet alive, and two or three managed to fly away when 

 freed from the bodies of their more disabled companions. This, then, 

 is what the bird was up to; instead of flying about as a Nighthawk 

 does, taking his insect prey in a conspicuous manner upon the wing, 

 he captures it in the way I have described above." 



A. Brazier Howell (1927) writes: 



August 28, 1926, I was sitting near midniglit, on the observation platform of 

 the California Limited as it stopped at Needles, California. It was with much 

 interest that I then noted at least three poorwills {Phalaenoptilus nuttalli 

 nitidus?) hawking about a powerful arc light in the railway yards close by. 

 The observation point of one of these was upon the top of a board fence 

 well within the circle of illumination ; of the others, some point out of my 

 direct vision and just beyond the fence. One after the other, until my train 

 left ten minutes later, they would flutter up in their quest for insects, not 

 just somewhere near the light but apparently right against the glass globe 

 which inclosed the arc, returning each time to their respective stations for 

 observation. 



