356 GEOLOGICAL SURVEY OF CANADA. 



B.C., to Tatchun river, lat. 62° 20', near Rink rapids, Yukon river. 

 The specimens were slightly darker than virginianus from the east. 

 {Bishop.) 



Breeding Notes. — A common summer resident, though it does 

 not appear to be as common as it was fifteen years ago. It lays 

 its two eggs, without any nest, on rocks, in a disused stone quarry, 

 or even on land that has recently been burnt over. (Rev. C. J. 

 Young.) All the nests taken at Ottawa, Ont., were on the ground 

 or on the gravel on the flat roofs of houses in the city. Eggs, twO) 

 of a pale olive buff, thickly mottled and daubed with varied tints of 

 darker gray slate or even blackish. (G. R. White.) On August ist, 

 1883, while in the eastern sand-hills with MiUer Christy, we found 

 the two young of a nighthawk sitting on the bare ground in the 

 open. They seemed about three days old. On the tips of their 

 beaks were still the hard white points with which they are furnished 

 to aid them in chipping the shell. The old shells were lying around 

 the nest, as is the case with the Poocoetes, and but for these I should 

 have passed by the young ones, as they had squatted close to the 

 ground and shut their eyes, for the blackness and brilliancy of 

 these would almost certainly have betrayed them. I gently touched 

 one of them, whereupon it crouched down more closely to the ground ; 

 but its companion, rising up, hissed with open beak and snapped 

 savagely at my fingers. On being further teased they ran off, 

 exactly in the manner of young ducks, with outstretched wings 

 and with neck and body at an angle of 45 degrees. After running 

 a few feet they stopped, squatted as before, and closed their eyes. 

 This they repeated several times, but at best they only made little 

 progress, and each time on being overtaken the bold one was always 

 ready to fight. This proved to be a male; the sex of the other 

 was not ascertained, but probably it was a female. At this age 

 the middle claw is not pectinated. {E. T. Seton.) The eggs of 

 the nighthawk (Chordeiles virginianus) were several times found 

 on the bare ground among the sand-hills, on the north side of the 

 Souris, near Plum creek, with no approach to a nest for the help- 

 less young. The parent birds endeavoured to draw us away from 

 their eggs, fluttered as if wounded a short distance from them, and 

 uttering cries of distress. {Hind.) In The Ottawa Naturalist, 

 Vol. XIX., pp. 56, 57 the Rev. G. Eifrig published a very complete 

 account of the breeding of nighthawks on a flat roof in Ottawa. 



