ii4 Bird -Lore 



nothing but feed these gray wolves in feathers, who robbed him of his 

 chance to get a fisher, lynx or sable almost before he was out of sight. 

 And there is a side to this enmity between the hunter and the Meat -bird 

 that is gruesome. It is years since, but some of us still recollect the 

 tale, of an old outlaw and murderer — more than once a murderer if reports 

 were true — who after haunting the woods for years, a terror to those 

 who crossed his path, fell finally in his turn, the victim of a man as evil 

 as himself. He was shot by his partner and left alone to starve to death 

 in his camp. And after three weeks of utter abandonment and despair, 

 as he saw his end approaching, with no possibility of escaping it, he crept 

 to the cold fireplace and got a black coal with which he scrawled a 

 message on a shred of birch bark. And they found him later, dead and 

 alone, with a tin basin protecting his face, so that, as the writing said, 

 "the Meat -birds might not pick his face after he was dead." 



A dread like that, shadowing the last hours of such a man, directing 

 his last words and last act: what a revelation it is of the character of the 

 bird and of the inveterate enmity with which the hunter regards him! 



Nighthawk Notes 



BY GEORGE H. SELLECK, Exeter, New Hampshire 



With photographs from nature 



THE Nighthawk has been a mystery to me since my boyhood, when 

 my grandmother told me of the bird that says "pork" and "beef." 

 Its cries, its nocturnal habits, its erratic but noiseless flight are almost 

 weird. John Burroughs says to get acquainted with a bird you must know 

 not only the bird, but its song and nest. Although I have seen and heard 

 many Nighthawks, and have watched a family of them carefully for a 

 month, have seen both the male and female sitting, and have had the 

 young ones in my hands and pockets, much of the mystery still remains. 

 Some birds will apparently gain confidence in a careful visitor who 

 comes to them often, but this one does not. It resembles the bark of a 

 tree and the bare gray ground so closely in color that it is very hard to 

 distinguish it from its surroundings. It seems to know this and will some- 

 times allow you to touch it with a stick or your finger. It shows anger 

 rather than fear when disturbed and must almost be pushed from its eggs. 

 Then it makes a rattling hiss somewhat like that of a goose, and jumps at 

 you perhaps, or it flies to the nearest stump, where it lies hissing with 

 outspread wings. 



One day in May I saw a Nighthawk alight on a pine branch, where it 

 went to sleep. The fact that it sat lengthwise of the branch with its head 



