1905 | NESTING OF THE NiGHT-HAWK IN OTTAWA. 57 
come from some nearby large willows or houses and utter some 
queer rattling or clucking notes of alarm or protest. In the even- 
ings, when the air was full of bullbats performing their marvellous 
- aerial evolutions and incidentally catching their insect prey, this 
male bird would sometimes dart down right near to me, producing 
the loud booming for which these birds are known, the female even 
then sitting at my feet. 
The female was faithfully brooding her solitary egg, rain or 
shine, early in the morning and late in the evening until the morn- 
ing of June 11th, when, before my eyes, out of the shell a young 
tiny bullbat emerged into the world. It was covered with grayish 
down, some black being sprinkled over all, and this combination of 
neutral tints made it again difficult to detect in the gravel. It was 
able to wabble about immediately. The mother now lost some of 
her former good nature, she hissed with wide open mouth—which in 
-these -birds is really cavernous—in the most startling manner. 
During the next three days she always brooded her offspring when- 
ever I looked at them; as late as 10 o’clock in the evening the 
mother was there. The feeding must have taken place later in the 
night. The youngster grew. fast and gave every promise of 
becoming a valiant boomer amongst his kind, when, alas, a stroke 
of bad fortune blasted my and, I suppose, more so the faithful 
mother’s hopes—if night-hawks ever have any. As the lives of 
Ernest Thompson Seton’s animals end in tragedy, so did this one. 
When I looked up on the morning of June 14th, the mother was 
there, appearing different than before, however ; disconsolate it 
seemed ; but the young one was gone. The lower bar of the 
balustrade being several inches above the platform, the young bird 
had fallen from it onto the steep roof, and I found its lifeless little 
body in the grass below. The old bird stayed about the roof for a 
few days longer, as though still hoping for the appearance of her 
offspring, and then she disappeared. 
A week or so after this I again noticed a night-hawk prowling 
around my roof. On June 29th I looked on the platform above 
and found another female bullbat sitting on hereggs. These were 
greener and more densely spotted than the former one, and, like 
this one, laid on the bare roof between the gravel without any nest- 
ing material whatever. It was not the same bird as before, as 
