CHAPTER LIII 



THE NIGHT-JAR 



THE night-hawk, or big razor-grinder, as he is more rarely 

 called in the Broadlands, is by no means common, for 

 cars abutting on the water are rare, and the night-hawks 

 love best the solitude that dwells in a car by day, for he 

 does not care to be disturbed as he roosts with his speckled 

 body parallel with the tree branch, or rests upon the ground 

 that is, when he is roosting for sometimes of a dull day he 

 will hawk by day. 



But the dusk is his chosen time ; the hour when the big 

 bats hawk over the water sees him fly beneath the moon 

 from a sleeping covert, just as the partridge is calling her 

 young on the uplands near by, the heron flighting to the 

 dikes, and the last snipe drumming round and round over 

 the moist water-grasses. 



Any fine day in May you may first hear his "razor- 

 grinder" going, as the Broadsmen call that strange jarring 

 voice, as he hawks over the reed-beds for moths, combing 

 their hair before he eats them with that long serrated claw 

 of his, as the fenmen say. 



Later in June, when they have grown more common, you 

 may flush him from the marshes, whence he rises awkwardly, 

 and flies heavily off to a tree, or drops again into the stuff 

 far ahead of you. An old fenman followed one, one hot 

 August day, to a thorn-tree growing on the marsh edge, 

 and he found " him sitting all along the branch, as if he was 



glued to it." 



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