THE NIGHT-HAWK. 



CHORDEILES VTRGINIANUS. 



night-hawk has nothing of the nature or of 

 - the habits of the hawk tribe, though, on the wing, 

 he may resemble some of the smaller hawks. At even- 

 ing twilight, or a little before or after, in search of flies 

 and various insects abounding at that hour, constantly 

 tacking this way and that, as the game attracts, his low 

 ground flight is swift and angular. His pleasure flights 

 are of a wholly different kind, novel performances, unlike 

 those of any other bird. He then flies more moderately, 

 frequently crying "maing" and, at the moment of utter- 

 ance, rising, by two or three quick strokes of the wings, 

 several feet straight upward. Eepeated ascents finally lift 

 him high in air ; Wilson says, " sixty or eighty feet." I 

 am sure I have many times seen him more than two hun- 

 dred feet overhead when he made his plunge. This 

 height attained, he suddenly turns downward, almost 

 perpendicularly at first, with fixed wings and ever increas- 

 ing speed till near the ground ; then with a graceful bend 

 or swoop in the form of a great horse-shoe, he shoots 

 upward again, mounting to plunge as before. When the 

 speed of his swoop is greatest, he produces a loud, boom- 

 ing sound; and this is his music. 



