A PAIR OF NIGHT-HAWKS. 139 



I tried to clasp them with my hand. The benedict 

 was absent this time, and was never seen on any of 

 my subsequent visits while the young birds were 

 fledging. By the first of July the bantlings hopped 

 about in a lively manner at my approach to their 

 domicile, and wheezed in a frightened way, spread- 

 ing out their mottled pinions. On the seventh of 

 July neither of the parents was to be seen, and the 

 youngsters sat so cosily side by side on the ground 

 that I had not the heart to disturb their slumbers. 

 Approaching cautiously on the tenth, I almost 

 stepped on the mother bird before she flew up. At 

 the same moment both young birds started from the 

 ground, and fluttered away in different directions on 

 their untried wings, their flight being awkward and 

 labored. A few weeks later four night-hawks were 

 circling about above the marsh, — no doubt the 

 family that had been affording me such an interesting 

 study. What was my surprise when one of them 

 resented my presence by swooping down toward me, 

 as the female had done a few weeks before ! 



Reference has already been made incidentally to 

 the night-hawk's curious habit of " booming," as it is 

 called. This sound is always produced as he plunges 

 in an almost perpendicular course from a dizzy height, 

 — or, more correctly, at the end of that headlong 

 plunge, just as he sweeps around in a graceful 

 curve. There is something almost sepulchral about 

 the reverberating sound. How it is produced is a 

 problem over which there has been no small amount 

 of discussion in ornithological circles. But after 



