YOUNG NIGHTJARS FED 29 



and though not quite on the same level, and though 

 the piece of bark was still in the way of one of 

 them, both might yet have been covered, though 

 not with ease, and so, possibly, hatched out. How- 

 ever, had I left them as they were, I have no doubt 

 that, assisted, perhaps, by its partner, the bird would 

 have continued to work away till matters were quite 

 satisfactory. But having seen so much, and since 

 it would soon have been too dark to see anything 

 more, I thought I would interfere, for once, and so 

 removed the bark, and smoothing down the declivity, 

 laid the eggs side by side, on a flat surface. I must 

 add that whilst this nightjar was thus struggling to 

 extricate its eggs, it uttered from time to time a 

 low querulous note. 



When the eggs are hatched, both parents assist 

 in feeding the chicks, and the first thing that one 

 notices — and to me, at least, it was an interesting 

 discovery — is that they feed them, not by bringing 

 them moths or cockchafers — on which insects the 

 nightjar is supposed principally to feed — in their 

 bill, but by a process of regurgitation, after the 

 manner of pigeons. There is one difference, how- 

 ever, viz., that whereas the bill of the young pigeon 

 is placed within that of the parent, the young 

 nightjar seizes the parent's bill in its own. Those 

 peculiar jerking and straining motions, which are 

 employed to bring up the food — from the crop, as I 

 suppose — into the mouth, are the same, or, at least, 

 closely similar, in either case. I have watched the 

 thing taking place so often, and from so near, that 

 I cannot, I think, have been mistaken. There was, 

 usually, a good light, when the first ministrations 



