78 STARLIGHT AND SUNSHINE. 
while in August you will seek in vain for your bobolink, though 
the meadow be full of them. 
This Protean accomplishment of the bird has led to much 
misconception, not only in the popular mind, but among the ornt- 
thologists as well, the dual guise suggesting two distinct species, 
a common supposition even yet among those who have not wit- 
jnessed the metamorphosis. Bob, moreover, pays a severe penalty 
‘in this relinquishment of his merry motley of cap and bells. 
In his annual September migrations, from Maine to Florida, 
he runs the gantlet of the gourmand guns aimed at those two 
prospective bites from his plump breast; for whether as “ reed- 
bird” in Pennsylvania or “rice-bird” in Louisiana, the appearance 
‘of his flocks is a whet to the epicurean appetite and to wholesale 
slaughter.+ Go to our market-stalls, not only in the South, but 
here in the very haunt where his song has barely ceased in the 
meadows, and see the sickening traffic in these plucked and man- 
' oled little bodies. “Reed-birds, twenty-five cents a bunch!” Alas! 
there would seem to be a hundred of our population who enjoy 
their bobolinks oz ¢oast to one who realizes the song that will be 
forever missed. 
My hill-top piazza affords a rare opportunity for observing the 
aerial play of the nighthawks. Regularly every afternoon, in the 
interval between four o’clock and sunset, they awake from their 
day-dozing, and one by one join the revellers aloft —now climbing 
the heavens with rapid spiral flight, whence with a sudden dip 
and folded wings they plunge headlong down, down, as though to 
dive into the glassy mill-pond in the valley below; and now, with 
2 sweeping curve of magnificent grace and proportions, skimming 
"the tree- -tops in buoyant upward glide, while we catch the abient 
twang of the cleaving wings. 
How has that mysterious sound puzzled the investigators! 
What is its source? I have attributed it to the wings; but all 
of our ornithologists have had their guess at this “boom,” as it is 
called. Wilson Flagg apparently considered it a vocal effort, as 
implied in his remark that “it utters a singular note, resembling 
the twang of a viol string.” Others have laid the sound to the 
