54 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 



of the shed or barn as we pass or perhaps feel an occasional 

 fanning of their pellicle wings even when the eye detects no sign 

 of them in the gloom this accepted type of blindness that 

 chooses the dark hours for flight, that dodges with artful purpose 

 against the stars, or in the blackest night fills its little red maw 

 with the most agile insects caught on the wing ! and this, too, 

 under disadvantages that would seem rather discouraging, for if 

 an ancient philosopher is to be believed, a most astounding feat 

 of aerial acrobatics is here in progress under cover of the dark- 

 ness. " She is the only bird that suckleth her little ones," says 

 my authority, "and these she will carry about her two at once, 

 embracing them as she flieth," the difficulties of which will be 

 appreciated when we consider that the bat in reality " flieth " with 

 her arms. 



What deeds are doing beneath the winking stars ! with the 

 owls and wild-cats and martens mousing among the slumbering 

 trees; the foxes, skunks, and weasels following their dark trails 

 among the herbage, to the terror of the hares and the meadow- 

 mice and low-cradled birds. Most of the feathered tribes have 

 their heads beneath their wings, though a few, more wakeful than 

 the rest, will sometimes anticipate the day in nocturnal minstrelsy. 

 I have twice heard the veery- thrush uttering its weird call at 

 midnight, and have been startled by the challenge of the oven- 

 bird, from its mossy hut beneath the ledge "TEACHER, TEACHER, 

 TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER" awakening the dreaming woods in 

 its reverberating echoes. The chipping-sparrow occasionally sings 

 at night, and the white-throated sparrow often dreams aloud. I 

 have occasionally heard, also, the chewink and cat-bird, while the 

 nighthawk, though neither a hawk nor, in spite of its name, as 

 much a creature of the night as of the dawning and waning day, 

 will sometimes amble from its prostrate perch upon the wall and 

 take a turn aloft, making the welkin echo to its wild screech, and 

 frightening the tree-tops with its swooping twang. I have often 

 heard the drum of the partridge well into the small hours, and 

 that feathered rogue, the yellow-breasted chat, once almost threw 

 me prostrate in my dewy tracks in the woods as he screamed in 



