54 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 
of the shed or barn as we pass—or perhaps feel an occasional 
fanning of their pellicle wings even when the eye detects no sign 
of them in the gloom—this accepted type of blindness that 
chooses the dark hours for flight, that dodges with artful purpose 
against the stars, or in the blackest night fills its little red maw 
with the most agile insects caught on the wing! and this, too, 
under disadvantages that would seem rather discouraging, for if 
an ancient philosopher is to be believed, a most astounding feat 
of aerial acrobatics is here in progress under cover of the dark- 
ness. “She is the only bird that suckleth her little ones,” says 
my authority, “and these she will carry about her two at once, 
embracing them as she flieth,” the difficulties of which will be 
appreciated when we consider that the bat in reality “flieth” with 
her arms. 
What deeds are doing beneath the winking stars! with the 
owls and wild-cats and martens mousing among the slumbering 
trees; the foxes, skunks, and weasels following their dark trails 
among the herbage, to the terror of the hares and the meadow- 
mice and low-cradled birds. Most of the feathered tribes have 
their heads beneath their wings, though a few, more wakeful than 
the rest, will sometimes anticipate the day in nocturnal minstrelsy. 
I have twice heard the veery-thrush uttering its weird call at 
midnight, and have been startled by the challenge of the oven- 
bird, from its mossy hut beneath the ledge —*«reacuer, TEACHER, 
TEACHER, TEACHER, TEACHER”— awakening the dreaming woods in 
its reverberating echoes. The chipping-sparrow occasionally sings 
at night, and the white-throated sparrow often dreams aloud. I 
have occasionally heard, also, the chewink and cat-bird, while the 
nighthawk, though neither a hawk nor, in spite of its name, as 
much a creature of the night as of the dawning and waning day, 
will sometimes amble from its prostrate perch upon the wall and 
take a turn aloft, making the welkin echo to its wild screech, and 
frightening the tree-tops with its swooping twang. I have often 
heard the drum of the partridge well into the small hours, and 
that feathered rogue, the yellow-breasted chat, once almost threw 
me prostrate in my dewy tracks in the woods as he screamed in 
