298 THE BIRDS OF MAINE 



As nearly as I am able to judge they feed almost exclusively 

 on prey caught while on the wing and eat almost everything 

 in the insect line which is capable of flying. I have found in 

 their stomachs moths, butterflies, beetles, caddis flies, and almost 

 every kind of winged insect imaginable. Everybody knows 

 that at a certain season in the summer there comes two or 

 three days when the air is full of large, black, winged ants, and 

 at such times I have known Nighthawks to be literally gorged 

 with them, the stomach of one bird containing fully three 

 hundred. 



No nest is made, the birds laying two eggs on the gravelly 

 shores, on rocky and pebbly open hillsides and pastures, on 

 the gravelled roofs of city buildings, among cinders along 

 railroads and even on sawdust beds. A rather strange fact is 

 that the eggs always, as far as my experience goes, resemble 

 in color and general markings the material on which they are 

 laid. For example eggs laid on a roof covered with crushed 

 granite of the rather coarse black and white type were coarsely 

 and evenly blotched with brown, black and buff. Eggs laid 

 on a slaty bed were lightly and finely marbled with grayish slate, 

 the ground color being buffy. Eggs from the "Ore Mountain" 

 at the Katahdin Iron Works had in general the peculiar rusty 

 tints which so closely matched the rusty iron ore on which 

 they were laid. Eggs from a sawdust bed were finely specked 

 with the colors such as weathered wood takes on. It would 

 be interesting to ascertain if an individual of this species had 

 power over the color pigments of its ovaries in any way. A 

 matter which may throw a little light on the subject is the fact 

 that the eggs of the Nighthawk generally may be found in 

 about the same spot each year, indicating that the same birds 

 return to nest at their former homes. I have been able to 

 follow up the general type of eggs secured from the granite 

 covered roof previously mentioned and these eggs laid different 

 seasons were of the same type. Again eggs from the slate 

 roof (a flat roof covered with slaty pebbles) were of the same 



