FIFTH WEEK] 



May 



125 



something, like a brownish bit of wind-blown rubbish, will 

 roll and tumble abead of us. It is a bird with a broken 

 wing, we say. How did it ever get up here? We hasten 

 forward to pick it up, when, with a last desperate flutter, 

 it topples off the edge of the roof; but instead of falling 

 helplessly to the street, the bird swings out above the 



NEST AND EGGS OF THE XlGHTHAWK. 



house-tops, on the white-barred pinions of a nighthawk. 

 Xow mark the place where first we observed the bird, and 

 approach it carefully, crawling on hands and knees. Other- 

 wise we will very probably crush the two mottled bits of 

 shell, so exactly like pebbles in external appearance, but 

 sheltering two little warm, beating hearts. Soon the shells 

 will crack, and the young nighthawks will emerge, tiny 



