126 THE NIGHTJAR 
way close up to the bird, but as I labour under the disadvantage 
of being short-sighted, and derive little assistance from glasses 
at night, I have always failed to observe it actually perched and 
singing. In the summer of 1859 a Nightjar frequented the imme- 
diate neighbourhood of my own house, and I had many opportunities 
of listening to its note. One evening especially, it perched on a railing 
within fifty yards of the house, and I made sure of seeing it, but 
when I had approached within a few yards of the spot from whence 
the sound proceeded the humming suddenly stopped, but was 
presently again audible at the other end of the railing which ran 
across my meadow. I cautiously crept on, but with no better 
success than before. As I drew near, the bird quitted its perch, 
flew round me, coming within a few feet of my person, and, on my 
remaining still, made itself heard from another part of the railing 
only a few yards behind me. Again and again I dodged it, but 
always with the same result ; I saw it, indeed, several times, but 
always on the wing. At last a longer interval of silence ensued, 
and when I heard the sound again it proceeded from a distant 
hedge which separated the meadow from a common. Here pro- 
bably its mate was performing the domestic duty of incubation 
cheered by the dismal ditty of her partner; but I never saw her, 
though I undertook another nocturnal chase of the musician, hunt- 
ing him from tree to tree, but never being able to discover his 
exact position, until the cessation of the sound and the sudden 
rustling of leaves announced the fact of his having taken his 
departure. 
In the dusk of the evening the Nightjar may commonly be seen 
hawking for moths and beetles after the manner of the Swallow- 
tribe, only that the flight is less rapid and more tortuous. I once 
saw one on the common mentioned above, hawking seemingly in 
company with Swifts and Swallows during the bright glare of a 
summer afternoon ; but most frequently it spends the day either 
resting on the ground among heath or ferns or on the branch of a 
tree, always (according to Yarrell and others) crouching close down 
upon it, in the line of the limb, and not across it. When perched 
on the ground it lies very close, ‘not rising (a French author says) 
until the dogs are almost on it, but worth shooting in September’. 
The poet Wordsworth, whose opportunities of watching the Nightjar 
in its haunts must have been numerous, knew that the whirring 
note is an accompaniment of the chase: 
The busy Dor-Hawk chases the white moth 
With burring note 
The burring Dor-Hawk round and round is wheeling 3 
That solitary bird 
Is all that can be heard 
In silence, deeper far than deepest noon. 
One point in the economy of the Nightjar is still disputed (1908) 
