The Pennant-winged Nightjar 275 



land, but which signally failed to hide them, when executed 

 in the middle of a lawn. 



Another species which apparently uses its decorative 

 wing-feathers for the purposes of escaping detection is the 

 Pennant-winged Nightjar {Macrodipteryx longipennis], which 

 has an ornamental shaft-like plume with a large feathery 

 racket. This species is found in West Africa and the 

 Soudan, and is an ordinary-looking Nightjar but for the 

 fact that, in the breeding-season, it carries a long wire-like 

 streamer on each wing. The ninth primary (not the 

 second, as Professor Newton says) is developed to an 

 enormous length, and floats behind the bird on each side 

 with a broad feathery tip at the end of it. That it is a 

 sexual ornament of the male I have but little doubt, but 

 another use for this curious appendage has been suggested 

 by the figure of the species given in Professor Newton's 

 'Dictionary of Birds' (p. 641), where the bird is repre- 

 sented as sitting on the ground with its- streamers elevated, 

 so that they look like grass-stems. This peculiar feature 

 in the bird's life was observed by the late Mr. Joseph Gedge, 

 who accompanied Sir Samuel Baker's expedition to the 

 Soudan, and made a sketch of the Nightjar in this position. 

 It is quite possible that the bird, which, like all of its kind, 

 has such a mottled plumage that it is impossible to detect 

 it on the ground, might risk observation from an enemy if 

 its long streamers lay out upon the sand, and it may there- 

 fore adopt the above method of self-preservation ; but it 

 must be a great effort to the bird to erect its primaries in 

 this manner, as I find that in the specimen I have mounted 

 in the Bird Gallery of the Natural History Museum, in the 

 position sketched by Mr. Gedge, the pennants cannot be 

 kept in their erect position, and the bird must certainly 

 have great difficulty in maintaining its two pennants aloft. 

 It will be extremely interesting some day to examine the 



