Brown, Olive or Grayish Brown, and Brown and Gray Sparrowy Birds 
should be noted to further distinguish the nighthawk from the 
whippoorwill, which has none, but which it otherwise closely 
resembles. This booming sound, coming from such a height that 
the bird itself is often unseen, was said by the Indians to be made 
by the shad spirits to warn the scholes of shad about to ascend 
the rivers to spawn in the spring, of their impending fate. 
The flight of the nighthawk is free and graceful in the ex- 
treme. Soaring through space without any apparent motion of 
its wings, suddenly it darts with amazing swiftness like an erratic 
bat after the fly, mosquito, beetle, or moth that falls within the 
range of its truly hawk-like eye. 
Usually the nighthawks hunt in little companies in the most 
sociable fashion. Late in the summer they seem to be almost 
gregarious. They fly in the early morning or late afternoon with 
beak wide open, hawking for insects, but except when the moon 
is full they are not known to go a-hunting after sunset. During 
the heat of the day and at night they rest on limbs of trees, fence- 
rails, stone walls, lichen-covered rocks or old logs—wherever 
Nature has provided suitable mimicry of their plumage to help 
conceal them. 
With this object in mind, they quite as often choose a hollow 
surface of rock in some waste pasture or the open ground on 
which to deposit the two speckled-gray eggs that sixteen days 
later will give birth to their family. But in August, when family 
cares have ended for the season, it is curious to find this bird of 
the thickly wooded country readily adapting itself to city life, 
resting on Mansard roofs, darting into the streets from the house- 
tops, and wheeling about the electric lights, making a hearty sup- 
per of the little, winged insects they attract. 
Black-billed Cuckoo 
(Coccyzus erythrophthalmus ) Cuckoo family 
Called also: RAIN CROW 
Length—11 to 12 inches. About one-fifth larger than the robin. 
Male—Grayish brown above, with bronze tint in feathers. Un- 
derneath grayish white ; bill, which is long as head and 
black, arched and acute. Skin about the eye bright red. 
Tail long, and with spots on tips of quills that are small and 
inconspicuous. 
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