442 NIGHT-HAWK. 



most, and with great rapidity, down sixty or eighty feet, wheel- 

 ing up again as suddenly; at which instant is heard a loud booming 

 sound, very much resembling that produced by blowing strongly 

 into the bung hole of an emtpy hogshead; and which is doubt- 

 less produced by the sudden expansion of his capacious mouth, 

 while he passes through the air, as exhibited in the figure on the 

 plate. He again mounts by alternate quick and leisurely motions 

 of the wings, play ing aboutas he ascends, uttering his usual hoarse 

 squeak, till in a few minutes he again dives with the same impe- 

 tuosity and violent sound as before. Some are of opinion that 

 this is done to intimidate man or beast from approaching his nest, 

 and he is particularly observed to repeat these divings most fre- 

 quently around those who come near the spot, sweeping down 

 past them, sometimes so near, and so suddenly, as to startle and 

 alarm them. The same individual is, however, often seen per- 

 forming these manoeuvres over the river, the hill, the meadow 

 and the marsh in the space of a quarter of an hour, and also to- 

 wards the fall, when he has no nest. This singular habit belongs 

 peculiarly to the male. The female has, indeed, the common 

 hoarse note, and much the same mode of flight; but never preci- 

 pitates herself in the manner of the male. During the time she is 

 sitting, she will suffer you to approach within a foot or two be- 

 fore she attempts to stir, and when she does, it is in such a flut- 

 tering, tumbling manner, and with such appearance of a lame 

 and wounded bird, as nine times in ten to deceive the person, 

 and induce him to pursue her. This "pious fraud," as the poet 

 Thomson calls it, is kept up until the person is sufficiently re- 

 moved from the nest, when she immediately mounts and disap- 

 pears. When the young are first hatched it is difficult to distin- 

 guish them from the surface of the ground, their down being of 

 a pale brownish colour, and they are altogether destitute of the 

 common shape of birds, sitting so fixed and so squat as to be 

 easily mistaken for a slight prominent mouldiness lying on the 

 ground. I cannot say whether they have two broods in the sea- 

 son; I rather conjecture that they have generally but one. 



