A PAIR OF NIGHT-HAWKS. 139 
I tried to clasp them with my hand. ‘The benedict 
was absent this time, and was never seen on any of 
my subsequent visits while the young birds were 
fledging. By the first of July the bantlings hopped 
about in a lively manner at my approach to their 
domicile, and wheezed in a frightened way, spread- 
ing out their mottled pinions. On the seventh of 
July neither of the parents was to be seen, and the 
youngsters sat so cosily side by side on the ground 
that I had not the heart to disturb their slumbers. 
Approaching cautiously on the tenth, I almost 
stepped on the mother bird before she flew up. At 
the same moment both young birds started from the 
ground, and fluttered away in different directions on 
their untried wings, their flight being awkward and 
labored. A few weeks later four night-hawks were 
circling about above the marsh, — no doubt the 
family that had been affording me such an interesting 
study. What was my surprise when one of them 
resented my presence by swooping down toward me, 
as the female had done a few weeks before ! 
Reference has already been made incidentally to 
the night-hawk’s curious habit of “ booming,”’ as it is 
called. This sound is always produced as he plunges 
in an almost perpendicular course from a dizzy height, 
—or, more correctly, at the end of that headlong 
plunge, just as he sweeps around in a graceful 
curve. There is something almost sepulchral about 
the reverberating sound. How it is produced is a 
problem over which there has been no small amount 
of discussion in ornithological circles. But after 
