NIGHTHAWK. 255 



and are easily carried from the fact of their being light. On the 

 middle toe is a curiously pectinated claw, which is supposed to be 

 useful for ridding the bird of the insects with which it is troubled. 

 When disturbed in the woods, if it alights on a branch it always 

 sits lengthways, in which position it is very apt to be mistaken for a 

 growth, and escape observation. 



It is one of the few birds whose call can be intelligibly put into 

 words. The experiment is often tried with other species, but in very 

 few instances can they be printed so as to be recognized when heard 

 out of doors. 



Genus CHORDEILES Swainson. 

 CHORDEILES VIRGINIANUS (Gmel.). 



181. Niffhthawk. (420) 



Above, mottled with black, brown, gray and tawny, the former in excess ; 

 below from the breast, transversely barred with blackish and white or pale 

 fulvous ; throat in the male with a large white, in the female tawny, cross-bar ; 

 tail, blackish, with distant pale marbled cross-bars and a large white spot 

 (wanting in the female) on one or both webs of all the feathers toward the end ; 

 quills, dusky, unmarked except by one large white spot on five outer primaries 

 about midway between their base and tip ; in the female this area is restricted 

 or not pure white. Length, about 9 ; wing, 8 ; tail, 5. 



Hab. — Northern and Eastern North America, east of the Oreat Plains, 

 south through tropical America to Buenos Ayres. 



Eggs, two, deposited on rocks or on the ground, or among the gravel of a 

 flat-roofed house in the city. They vary from pale olive-buff to buffy and 

 grayish-white thickly mottled and daubed with varied tints of darker gray 

 slate, olive or even blackish mixed with a marbling of purplish-gray, both 

 pattern and tints being very variable. 



This is a well-known and abundant summer resident, arriving 

 from the south early in May. Though a Nighthawk, it is often seen 

 abroad by "day during cloudy weather, and in the evening, just a* 

 the sun is sinking below the horizon, numbers of these birds are 

 occasionally seen careering around high overhead, uttering their 

 peculiar cry, so readily recognized, yet so difficult either to imitate 

 or. describe. While thus in the exercise of their most wonderful 

 powers of flight, and performing many graceful aerial evolutions, 

 they will suddenly change their course and plunge headlong down- 

 wards with great rapidity, producing at the same time a singular 

 booming sound which can be heard iar some distance. Again, as 



