FOOD OF WEST VIRGINIA BIBDS 43 



CHAPTER VII. 



NIGHTHAWKS, SWIFTS AND FLYCATCHERS. 



j 

 Some Aerial Species. 



The Nighthawks, ' Swifts and Flycatchers are all more or less aerial 

 and take their food on the wing. The first two families are very dis- 

 tinctively birds of the air, and spend most of their time flying about. 

 Three members of the Nighthawk or "Goatsucker" family are found 

 in West Virginia. They are the Nighthawk, Chuck-will's-widow and 

 Whip-poor-will. These birds are peculiarly well adapted to their work 

 as insect hunters, their mouths being very capacious, their gullets large, 

 and their stomachs enormous. They take their food on the wing. The 

 Chimney Swift, our only representative of the Swift family, spends 

 practically all, its time in the air and is a great destroyer of harmful 

 insects. The Flycatchers, a large family of birds that is well represented 

 in our State, are also insectivorous and take their food as they fly hur- 

 riedly through the air in pursuit of their fleet-winged prey. These 

 families will be described in the paragraphs that follow. 



Goatsuckers. 



The Goatsuckers, as the family of Nighthawks and Whip-poor-wills 

 is sometimes called, are large birds with strong wings and an almost 

 inexhaustible capacity for their insect food. While few in number of 

 species, they are many in number of individuals, though one of our 

 species, the Chuck-will's-widow has been found but once in the State. 

 It is a rare southern bird and does not venture far north. The other two 

 species are very abundant, the Nighthawk exceedingly so. The Whip- 

 poor-will's call is heard almost every where in West Virginia in those 

 months when they are present with us. During the first week in May 

 the Nighthawks arrive from the south, though they are not often seen 

 in large numbers in the spring, a few remain in our mountain sections 

 to breed, though most of them go farther north.^ About the middle of 

 August these birds begin to fly toward the south. Then may be seen 

 immense flocks of these very graceful birds as they fly about in pursuit 

 of their food. At that season of the year they are sometimes called 

 "Bull Bats" because of the coarse, raucus note that they utter, though 

 this booming note is heard most often in the spring. Prof. Forbush 

 says, "It is probable that the Nighthawk is one of the most useful of 

 all birds. It ranks next to the Flicker in the destruction of ants, and 

 it takes them when they are flying and about to propagate. Professor 

 Beal estimated that the stomachs of eighty-seven Nighthawks which he 

 examined 'contained not less than twenty thousand ants, and these were 

 not half of the insect contents.' One Nighthawk's stomach held remains 

 of thirty-four May beetles. Great numbers of grasshoppers are caught 

 by these birds. Potato beetles, cucumber beetles, leaf hoppers, bugs, 

 and enormous quantities of gnats and mosquitoes have been found in 

 their stomachs. Nighthawks are absolutely harmless, as they never 



