DIARY OF THE HABITS OF NIGHTJARS. 501 



not call continuously. There is an interval, and the chicks sit 

 still. She again calls, and they run on. Same again. Old bird 

 keeps calling them at intervals, and each time they get farther 

 away from the old place, stopping between the calls. I walk 

 after them. When I get to them — some seven or eight paces off 

 — both the old birds start up from the ground. One (the lighter- 

 coloured one) spins along the ground as though injured, with her 

 wings extended (as a Partridge in same case), but when I walk 

 away flies to the old elder-stump, where she sits clucking — per- 

 haps to call the chicks back again. I then walk some distance 

 off, keeping the bird in view, and sit down on tree-stump watching 

 her. It must now be 4 o'clock or past (have left watch at bush). 

 Thinking it better to let the bird get easy in her mind, I walk 

 away altogether, and when I return to the bush (at 4.25) neither 

 old birds nor chicks are to be seen. It would seem that the 

 birds had divined my presence early in the morning, and called 

 off their chicks to a safer spot. This, however, is merely con- 

 jecture. No action on the part of either of the old birds 

 previous to the calling off of the chicks suggested that they were 

 suspicious of my presence, and the more I think of it the less I 

 believe that they were. Following the chicks was a great mis- 

 take. Leave at a little past 5 a.m., neither old birds nor chicks 

 having come back. 



July 12th. — (Fine.) 8.25 p.m. Found the birds again.* 

 They were some fifty yards from the original place. Put up both 

 the old birds. One (the hen, I have no doubt) first spun along 

 the ground, then flew about much disturbed, then settled on 

 ground some little way off, and kept up a loud continuous clucking. 

 One chick had already run out of the way. The other — the 

 darker one — lay there, apparently not at all disturbed. After a 

 time hen bird rose from ground, and flew about in great state of 

 excitement, coming quite near me as I sat on the ground, and 

 hovering about ; then darting off again, then sitting on thistle- 

 tuft, then again on the ground, always making the distressed 

 kind of clucking note, which at times became shriller, rising, as 

 it were, to an agony. The other bird — the male — also flew about 

 near, behaving in the same way, but not so violently — a little less 



* They had not returned to the old place, nor had I been able to find 

 them during the interval. 



