30 TRAVELS ABOUT HOME 



the Nighthawk and Whip-poor-will as well as the necessary 

 photographic apparatus. 



The former were accepted as incontrovertible evidence 

 and my host readjusted his views as to the status of the 

 birds which they represented. We may therefore at once 

 turn our attention to the Nighthawk which was sitting pati- 

 ently on a bit of granite out in the hay fields. The sun was 



" Spread herself out on the grass at my feet " 



low when we reached the fiat rock where she had been last 

 seen, and on which her eggs had been laid and her young 

 hatched, but a fragment of egg-shell was the only evidence 

 that the bare-looking spot had once been a bird's home. The 

 grass had lately been mowed and there was no immediately 

 surrounding cover in which the bird might have hidden. It 

 is eloquent testimony of the value of her protective coloring, 

 therefore, that we almost stepped on the bird, which had 

 moved to a near-by flat rock. 



Far more convincing, however, was her faith in her own 

 invisibility. Even the presence of a dog did not tempt her 

 to flight, an 1 when the camera was erected on its tripod 

 within three feet of her body, squatting so closely to its 

 rocky background, her only movement was that which was 



