178 KNOWING BIRDS THROUGH STORIES 



sects were their only food and that they fly in the eve- 

 ning because at that time most of the winged insects are in 

 the air. I expected to find a bird with a large, wide bill, 

 and so looked at my whippoorwill's head very carefully. 

 The head was broad and rather large, but to my utter sur- 

 prize the bill seemed little larger than a large grain of 

 wheat. There were a lot of bristle-like hairs growing at 

 the base of the bill which made her look still more queer. I 

 remarked to one of the boys that I had never seen so large 

 a bird with so small a bill, and then, as I had been used to 

 feeding birds that way, I pulled her mouth open and there 

 came my greatest surprize. It opened clear down almost 

 to the base of her head. It looked as tho she could easily 

 swallow something much larger than her own head, for 

 her mouth seemed to open half way down her throat. Then 

 I understood how she could catch and swallow June bugs 

 and other large beetles. 



The whippoorwill belongs to the CaprimulgidaB fam- 

 ily, of which a great many varieties exist, but only a few 

 live in the United States. They are commonly called goat- 

 suckers I suppose because the mouth is so big that people 

 used to think that they drew milk from goats. 



We have four principal varieties of goatsuckers in this 

 country and a few lesser varieties exist also. Three are 

 generally known in the United States. The one most 

 common is the nighthawk. Throughout the summer 

 over a great part of the United States this bird is seen 

 flying about over fields and meadows nearly every after- 

 noon and evening, and many people mistakenly call it a 

 whippoorwill. The nighthawk differs from the whip- 

 poorwill in that it is larger and flies well up in the air, 

 while both the whippoorwill and the chuck-willVwidow 



