384 CAPRIMULGIDiE. 



play on occasion a considerable amount of activity.* When 

 about half-grown the feathers begin to shew. The fledglings 

 are not very hard to rear, and may be kept through the 

 winter, as recorded by Salmon (Mag. N. H. ix. p. 528) and 

 others (Journ. f. Orn. 1869, p. 220; 1870, p. 69), but it 

 seems that in captivity they never attempt to feed themselves. 

 The Nightjar is common in nearly every county of Great 

 Britain, though perhaps more plentiful in some of the 

 southern counties of England.t In Ireland, says Thomp- 

 son, it is a regular summer-visitant to certain localities in 

 all parts of the country, but of rare appearance elsewhere. 

 Its occurrence in the Outer Hebrides is only kno^vn from one 

 obtained in North Uist in 1870, as Sir John Orde informs 

 the Editor, and it is but an accidental straggler to Orkney 

 and Shetland, though it has been many times observed in 

 the latter. It is also an occasional visitor to the Fseroes. In 

 Scandinavia it seems to be pretty abundant as far as lat. 63°, 

 and in Russia it reaches Archangel. Its range further east- 

 ward is very imperfectly defined. Pallas, indeed, gives it as 

 being found throughout the whole of temperate Siberia, but 

 it probably does not extend beyond Irkutsk. It would seem 

 to inhabit Turkestan and Persia, some of the specimens ob- 

 tained in both countries varying by having a lighter plumage. 

 It is a summer-visitant to Palestine and is found in Arabia. 

 In Egypt and Nubia it appears to have been only observed 

 on passage, but how much further it goes to take up its 

 winter-quarters is unknown, for the South-African Nightjar, 

 recognized by Andrew Smith as identical with our own, has 

 been since described as specifically distinct. Drake says it 



* Mr. H. M. Wallis writes to the Editor that he once put a Nightjar off her 

 two down-clad young, which he picked up and set side by side on his hand. One 

 remained quiet, but, to his surprise, " the other jumped off, and ran lilie a 

 ciiicken to the roots of a bush near by," where it squatted. 



f In some places it suffers much persecution from the perversity of game- 

 keepers who stupidly consider that a bird which looks so much like a Hawk on the 

 wing as to be mistaken for one by little birds, when it comes abroad, must have 

 Hawk-like habits. As it is, we have not a more harmless species than the Night- 

 jar and not many more beneficial, for it feeds almost entirely on cockchf-fers and 

 moths — the latter being chiefly those whose larvre are as destructive to tlie roots 

 of grass as are the grubs of the former. 



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