32 BIRD LIFE GLIMPSES 



chick's mouth, we may suspect that it also swallows 

 large quantities of insects of an equally small, or 

 smaller size. The beak need neither be widely nor 

 continuously opened, for many such to be engulfed 

 as the bird sailed through a strata of them ; but 

 even if it were both, we need not wonder at 

 its not often being remarked, in a species which 

 flies and feeds, mostly, by night, when it is both 

 dark, and people are in bed. Still, I find in See- 

 bohm's " History of British Birds " the following : 

 " The bird has been said to hunt for its food, 

 with its large mouth wide open, but this is 

 certainly an error/' The first part of the sentence 

 impresses me more than the last. Why has the 

 bird its tremendous, bristle-fringed gape .^ Does it 

 not suggest a whale's mouth, with the baleen } 

 Other birds catch individual insects as cleverly, 

 without it. 



There is another consideration which makes me 

 think that nightjars feed much in this way. They 

 hardly begin to fly about, before 8.30 in the evening, 

 and between 3 and 4, next morning, they have retired 

 for the day. Now I have watched them closely, on 

 many successive evenings in June and July, and, for 

 the life of me, I could never make out what food they 

 were getting, or, indeed, that they were getting any, 

 up to at least 10 o'clock. For much of the time 

 they would be sitting on a bough, or perched on a 

 fir-top, and churring, and, when they flew, it was 

 often straight to the ground, and then back, again, 

 to the same tree. They certainly did not seem to 

 be catching insects when they did this, and their 

 longer flights were not, as a rule, round trees, and 



