240 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



they only made little progress, and each time on being Qvertaken the bold one 

 was always ready to fight. * * * 



In the light of these observations it seems likely that in some of the cases 

 in, which the Night-hawks are supposed to have carried off their young, the 

 latter had really run from danger, or were led away by the parent birds. 



Plumages. — Dr. Louis B. Bishop (1896) has called attention to the 

 fact that the females of this race do not show the characters of the 

 race as well as the males. He collected a series of 13 birds in North 

 Dakota, of which he writes : "Three females from the same locality 

 taken in June and July — one of them a breeding bird taken with a 

 typical male and two eggs — are similar but with the upper parts 

 darker and the entire lower parts tinged with buff, which becomes 

 ochraceous-buff on the throat. Two other female Nighthawks from 

 the same region, one taken on June 11, and the other with two eggs 

 on June 24, are quite different, the prevailing tint of the entire 

 plumage, except the greater wing-coverts, wings and tail, being 

 ochraceous-buff. These birds might readily be referred to henry i^ 

 but all the males taken or seen during the breeding season were 

 unmistakably semietti.'''' 



He says further: "The pale colors of the male protect him admira- 

 bly, hannonizing with the dull gray of the fences and rocks, perched 

 on which he passes the day, while the darker colors of the female 

 render her less conspicuous when seated over her eggs on the black 

 soil." 



Behamor. — F. A. Patton (1924) says that "these birds will perch 

 on a hot rock in the blazing sun the hottest summer day, the rock so 

 hot one cannot hold a. hand on it. You would think they would 

 cook, they however seem stupid, they seem to lack the pep of other 

 Night Hawks, to get out and soar at twilight, but are a quiet re- 

 tiring bird, and I have known them on a hot day to let one approach 

 close enough to strike them with a stick." 



CHORDEILES MINOR HESPERIS Grinnell 



PACIFIC NIGHTHAWK 



Plates 34, 35 

 HABITS 



Wliat was formerly part of the range of the western nighthawk 

 {henryi) is now assigned to this more recently described race. Ac- 

 cording to the 1931 Check-list, it "breeds from southeastern British 

 Columbia to southwestern Saskatchewan, central Montana, central 

 Utah, and northwestern Wyoming south along the Pacific coast to 

 northern California and in the Sierra Nevada south to the San 

 Bernardino Mountains, southern California." 



Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1905a) named this race and described it as 

 "most nearly resembling Ch. v. virginiamis, but: — outer surface of 



