ii4 Bird Comrades 



yonder in the woods ? My glass soon revealed their iden- 

 tity a pair of turkey buzzards perched side by side on 

 a limb, one of them squatted flat on his belly ready to 

 take his first nap. My curiosity led me to go near them, 

 when they spread their broad, sable wings, flew a few 

 rods, and alighted on another horizontal bar. There 

 they sat as long as I could see them in the thickening 

 darkness, turning their heads now and then to see whether 

 their ill-bred visitor was still spying upon them. They 

 made no efforts to conceal themselves, as the small birds 

 do in roosting, for they knew, no doubt, that nothing 

 would carry off fowls of their size. 



A little later on the same evening a whip-poor-will 

 darted up from the roadside and flew into the woods a 

 short distance, alighting on a white flag of good size, so 

 that I could plainly see his dark form in the moonlight. 

 Then I was witness of this uncanny bird's table manners, 

 which were entirely unknown 'to me and may be to 

 others. At irregular intervals he leaped into the air, 

 now in one direction, now in another, captured an insect, 

 and flew back to the top of the flag. Some of his evolu- 

 tions were quite wonderful, and all of them were the per- 

 fection of grace. He described all kinds of curves and 

 loops. On alighting he uttered a low, hollow chuck 

 suggestive of the sepulchral. Another notch had to be 

 cut in the tally-stick of my ornithological journey I 

 had learned how the whip-poor-will takes his nocturnal 

 dinner of moths and beetles, and I felt that there was 

 still such a thing as news to be gathered in birdland. 



