562 BULLETIN 50, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM. 



CHORDEILES VIRGINIANUS VIRGINIANUS (Gmelin). 



NIGHTHAWK. 



Adult male. — Prevailing color of upper parts sooty black or oliva- 

 ceous black, very faintly glossed with greenish, but this much broken 

 by irregular spotting, marbling, and vei*miculations of buff, pale 

 buffy gray, and whitish, the black greatly predominating on pileum, 

 where the sparse markings are irregularly spot-like and buff, and on 

 back where the markings are smaller, in form of irregular narrow 

 bars or vermiculations ; hindneck with buff spots larger, more regu- 

 larly guttate, forming indication of a broken collar; wing-coverts 

 wdth rather large and numerous irregular spots of pale buffy grayish 

 or dull grayish white, in addition to smaller irregular vermiculations 

 and marblings, mostly of a more buffy hue; alula, primary coverts, 

 primaries, and distal greater coverts dull grayish black, the last 

 margined terminally with pale grayish, the primaries passing (more 

 or less distinctly) into a more grayish hue at tips, the sixth, seventh, 

 and eighth (sometimes ninth also)*^ crossed, a little anterior to the 

 middle portion, by a broad, sharply defined, space of white, this 

 involving the full width of both webs, as well as the shaft itself; tail 

 dull grayish black or dusky, crossed by bands of paler (mostly buffy 

 grayish and dull grayish white) marblings and spottings, and crossed 

 by a more or less interrupted broader subterminal band of white; 

 suborbital and auricular regions sooty black more or less distinctly 

 streaked or longitudinally flecked with buffy, cinnamon, or rusty 

 (sometimes nearly plain blackish), the malar region similar but more or 

 less distinctly spotted with buffy; chin, upper and middle part of 

 throat, and subauricular region immaculate white, forming a con- 

 spicuous A-shaped patch; lower throat dark sooty brown with trian- 

 gular or guttate spots of brownish buff or cinnamon, the chest similar 

 but with the spots dull whitish, the lower chest and upper breast 

 with the markings more transverse or bar-like; rest of under parts 

 broadly and regularly barred with dark sooty brown or sooty blackish 

 and buffy white, the bars of the two colors of nearly equal width but 

 the whitish ones averaging rather broader than the dusky ones, 

 especially on more posterior parts, the under tail-coverts with the 

 white interspaces much wider; under wing-coverts and axillars dark 

 sooty brown or sooty blackish much more narrowly as well as less 

 regularly barred with buffy or buffy whitish ; under surface of remiges 

 dull brownish slate, the inner webs of five outer primaries crossed 

 by a broad band of white anterior to the middle portion; bill blackish, 

 the basal portion of mandible pale brownish; iris blackish brown; 



a More rarely, this white area is present, though of much less exteat, on the tenth 

 (outermost) primary. 



