DRAGON’S BLOOD 223 
reach the surface again. When I switched on the light, 
at first I could see nothing, and I began to be afraid 
that the “nangel” had escaped through the open 
window. Finally on the picture-moulding I spied 
the celestial visitor. It was a screech owl of the 
red phase, — they may be either red or gray, —and 
when I came near it snapped its beak fiercely, to the 
terror of the Sergeant under the clothes. With a 
quick jump I managed to catch it. At first it puffed 
up its feathers and pretended to be very fierce, but 
at last it snuggled into my hand and was with diffi- 
culty persuaded to fly out again into the cold night. 
Another singer of the night is of course the whip- 
poor-will. When I lived farther out in the country 
than I do now, for two successive years I was awak- 
ened at two o’clock in the morning by a whip-poor- 
will passing north and singing in the nearby woods. 
The third year he broke all records by alighting on my 
lawn at sunset in late April. There, under a pink dog- 
wood tree which stood like a statue of spring, he 
sang for ten minutes. Only once before have I ever 
heard a whip-poor-will sing in the daylight. Once at 
high noon in the pine-barrens, one burst out so loud 
and ringingly that the pine warbler stopped his 
trilling and the prairie warbler his seven wire-thin 
notes which run up the scale. It was as uncanny as 
when the Lone Wolf gave tongue to the midnight 
hunting chorus for Mowgli, at the edge of the 
jungle by day. 
Now, when I live nearer civilization, and alas! 
farther from the birds, I have to travel far to hear 
