THE NIGHTJAR AND HIS RATTLE-SONG 145 



ridge with stubble or the grouse with heather. Other 

 names, like dor-hawk and jar-owl, show that country 

 people hardly knew what to make of this bird, and 

 learned naturalists also are puzzled to fit the nightjar 

 into his proper place among the bird families. 



Outwardly, he has certainly something in common 

 with owls and hawks the soft pencilled plumage of 

 the owl, and the same noiseless flight, the long tail of 

 cuckoo or hawk, the small but widely gaping bill of the 

 swifts, and a way of hawking for prey like the flight 

 of swift or swallow. 



He is really our only species of a family that is 

 neither hawk nor owl, a family with members nearly 

 all over the world. 



Wheel-bird was a pleasing old name from the wheeling 

 flight ; churn-owl is a name sometimes used, from the 

 churning sound of the song ; and goat-sucker was a 

 foolish name given of old, perhaps because the nightjar 

 was fond of wheeling about the herds of goats at 

 night, where he found good hunting among the 

 insects, and became suspected of taking goats' milk. 



Late Singers 



' ' I heard many birds of several species sing 1 last year after mid- 

 summer ; enough to prove that the summer solstice is not the period 

 that puts a stop to the music of the woods. The yellow-hammer, no 

 doubt, persists with more steadiness than any other ; but the wood- 

 lark, the wren, the redbreast, the swallow, the whitethroat, the gold- 

 finch, the common linnet, are all undoubted instances of the truth of 

 what I advanced." 



