NIGHTHAWK, 



Chordeiles virgitiianus Swainson. 



Plate XXXIII. Fig. 3. 



pN THE northern and central parts of our country the summer heat is much more 

 a_ oppressive and disagreeable than in the Gulf region. The nights in July and August 

 are extremely vsrarm, ■while in the South even the hottest days are followed by cool and 

 pleasant nights. The most beautiful month in the northern parts of our country is 

 June. In June the birds are almost all breeding, and their songs awaken the dreamy 

 woods with their reverberating echoes. The Bobolink makes the meadows ring with 

 its tinkling song, and the Redwing charmingly enlivens the marshes and sloughs with 

 its loud notes. ^ 



The most suggestive and poetical part of the day in June is vesper ^time. We are 

 sitting on one of the many moss-covered stones, so common in the pastures of Wisconsin. 

 The sun has just disappeared on the horizon, and the air is exceedingly soft and mild. 

 This time of the day affords a rare opportunity for observing the aerial play of the 

 NiGHTHAWKS, also knOwn in some parts of the country as the Bull-bats, Mosquito Hawks, 

 and Goatsuckers. How abundant they are and how^ they cross and recross each other's 

 paths high up in the air! How gracefully they soar and dart up and dow^n, to the 

 right and left! There is probably no other bird with the excepftion of the Swallows 

 and Swifts, w^hich can rival these birds in the beauty and ease of their aerial motions, 

 abounding as they do in feats of the most wonderful agility. Sometimes they rise 

 several hundred feet in the most careless manner, crying louder and louder their brirrrr, 

 brirrrr, as they ascend, then instantly one or the other glides obliquely downward with 

 astonishing gracefulness and rapidity "almost to the ground, then darting off in a hori- 

 zontal way with wonderful swiftness, again ascending perpendicularly. The friend of 

 Nature can scarcely find a better entertainment and a greater source of pleasure than 

 to observe the gamboling and the gyrations and evolutions of these birds. They arc 

 not nightbirds as their name would imply. They dxe revellers of the late afternoon and 

 the evening twilight, being never found on the wing after dark. As soon as the shades 

 of the night creep over the landscape, all retire and none are seen again until the day 

 begins to dawn in the morning. 



Regularly every afternoon, usually between four o'clock and sunset, the Night- 

 hawks awake from their day dozing, arid one by one joins 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 in the glossy mill-pond in 

 the valley below ; and now, with a sweeping curve of magnificent grace and proportions, 

 skimming the tree-tops in buoyant upward glide, while we catch the vibrant twining 

 of the cleaving wings." (W. Hamilton Gibson.) 



In the days of my boyhood I have often enjoyed myself in throwing my hat or a 

 piece of wood in the air where the Nighthawks were sailing around. One or the other 

 of these birds darted down after the falling object in a wonderfully rapid manner, then 



