54 CAPRIMULGID^ : WHIPPOORWILLS ; NIGHT-HAWKS. 



bends the most diverse means to her useful ends. In 

 the spring-time, during the period de noces, the Night- 

 hawk repeatedly plunges head foremost downward with 

 fearful velocity, accompanying this startling tour deforce 

 with a strange booming sound, likened by some to the 

 distant bellowing of a bull, by others to the noise made 

 by blowing in the bung-hole of an empty barrel. 



About the first of June, the singular incidents of the 

 courtship over, the Night-hawk deposits her two eggs 

 upon the cold bare ground, scarcely a trace of a nest 

 being formed to receive her treasured charge. The eggs 

 are also frequently laid on bare rocks, and even the flat 

 concreted roofs of houses in large cities, where the heat 

 of the' sun helps to incubate them, as it does those of 

 terns and sandpipers, while the birds are flying about 

 in broad daylight. The eggs are elliptical in contour, 

 averaging in size 1.25X0.85, and are curiously fretted, 

 veined and marbled with lavender, stone-gray and neu- 

 tral tints. She is a faithful and courageous mother, 

 who, when danger threatens, will at risk of life feign 

 to be crippled, and endeavor to divert attention 

 from her eggs to herself by fluttering and tumbling 

 about as long as such pious fraud seems likely to suc- 

 ceed — then quartering anxiously back and forth 

 within a few feet of one who may be bending over the 

 frail orbic bodies that encase her hopes. " The nest- 

 lings are hatched downy. This is a singular circum- 

 stance, in which the Caprimulgida resemble the lower 

 orders of birds, and not the higher groups with which 

 they are associated. The chicks are not, however, 

 hatched entirely clothed ; for the first two or three days 

 they are only densely flocculent on the under parts, the 

 upper being but sparsely downy; soon, however, they 



