THE NIGHT-HAWK. 
CHORDEILES VIRGINIANUS. 
HE night-hawk has nothing of the nature or of 
the habits of the hawk tribe, though, on the wing, 
he may resemble some of the smaller hawks. At even- 
ing twilight, or a little before or after, in search of flies 
and various insects abounding at that hour, constantly 
tacking this way and that, as the game attracts, his low 
ground flight is swift and angular. His pleasure flights 
are of a wholly different kind, novel performances, unlike 
those of any other bird. He then flies more moderately, 
frequently crying “maing” and, at the moment of utter- 
ance, rising, by two or three quick strokes of the wings, 
several feet straight upward. Repeated ascents finally lift 
him high in air; Wilson: says, “sixty or eighty feet.” I 
am sure I have many times seen him more than two hun- 
dred feet overhead when he made his plunge. This 
height attained, he suddenly turns downward, almost 
perpendicularly at first, with fixed wings and ever increas- 
ing speed till near the ground; then with a graceful bend 
or swoop in the form of a great horse-shoe, he shoots 
upward again, mounting to plunge as before. When the 
speed of his swoop is greatest, he produces a loud, boom- 
ing sound; and this is his music. 
