172 



BIRDS OF AMERICA 



NIGHTHAWK 

 Chordeiles virginianus virginianus (Ginclin) 



A. O. U. Number 420 See Color Plates 65 



Other Names. — Goatsucker of Carolina; Bull-bat; 

 Mosquito Hawk; Will-o'-the-Wisp ; Pisk; Piramidig; 

 Long-winged Goatsucker. 



General Description.— Length, lo inches. Plumage, 

 a variegation of black, gray, brown, and buf=f; ifhitc 

 patch oil wing. Tail, cmargiiiatc. 



Color.— Adult Male: Prevailing color of upper 

 parts, sooty-black, very faintly glossed with greenish, 

 much broken by irregular spotting, marbling, and 

 streaks of buff, pale buffy-gray, and whitish, the black 

 greatly predominating on crown, 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 streaks ; hindneck with buff 

 spots larger, more regularly drop-shaped, forming 

 indication of a broken collar; wing-coverts with rather 

 large and numerous irregular spots of pale buffy- 

 grayisli or dull grayish-white, in addition to smaller 

 irregular streaks and marblings, mostly of a more 

 huffy hue ; primary coverts, primaries, and outer greater 

 coverts, dull grayish-black, the last margined terminally 

 with pale grayish, the primaries passing into a more 

 grayish hue at tips, the sixth, seventh, and eighth 

 (sometimes ninth also) crossed a little in front of 

 middle, 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 an interrupted broader band of. white; 

 region around eyes and sides of head, sooty-black 

 streaked or longitudinally flecked with buffy, cinnamon, 

 or rusty (sometimes nearly plain blackish), the cheeks 

 similar but spotted with buffy ; chin, upper and middle 

 part of throat, and span below ears, immaculate white, 

 forming a conspicuous V-shaped jiatch ; lower throat. 



dark sooty-brown with triangular 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 rear parts, the under tail-coverts with the white 

 interspaces much wider; under wing-coverts, dark 

 sooty-brown or sooty-blackish much more narrowly as 

 well as less regularly barred with buffy or buffy-whit- 

 ish ; the inner webs of five outer primaries crossed by 

 a broad baud of white in front of middle portion; bill, 

 blackish ; iris, blackish-brown ; legs and feet, dusky. 

 .'Vdult Female : Similar to the adult male but without 

 llie U'hite band on tail, the white on primaries more 

 restricted, the lighter spotting, etc., of upper parts 

 usually more conspicuous (giving a lighter colored cast 

 to the general color of upper parts), under parts more 

 strongly tinged with buffy, and white throat-patch 

 usually suffused with (sometimes entirelv replaced by) 

 buff. 



Nest and Eggs. — Eggs : 2, grayish-white densely 

 spotted and blotched with gray, black, and pale purple; 

 laid in gravelly spaces of open fields, on large rocks, on 

 gravel roofs in cities, or (more rarely) in open spaces 

 among woods. 



Distribution. — North and South America ; breeds 

 from southern Yukon, central Mackenzie, central Kee- 

 watin, northern Quebec, and Newfoundland south to 

 northern parts of Gulf States and west to edge of 

 Plains from A-Iinnesota to northeastern Texas; migrates 

 through the Greater Antilles and Central America ; 

 winters in South .'America from Brazil south to 

 Argentina. 



Drawing by R. I. Brasher 



NIGHTHAWK (J nat. size) 



