190 CAPRIIMULGID.E. 



of trees that grow in patches in that locality, consisting of 

 oak, birch, and fir trees, scattered over heathy ground. We 

 frequently went towards dusk in the months of June and 

 July to enjoy the sight of their gambols and the music 

 of their monotonous tune. 



Their flight is more like that of a moth than of a bird, 

 noiseless, except when they betray themselves by beating 

 their wings together twice at a time and snapping with their 

 beaks ; the males have also a peculiar call-note, which they 

 utter when perched in a tree. This whizzing call, which 

 can only be described in the words arerrrrrr, terrrrrr I 

 and which is kept up for several minutes at a time, is by 

 no means a guide by which their situation can be known, 

 as they are enabled to modulate it at pleasure, and the 

 nearer one comes to them, the further off the sound some- 

 times seems to be ; they damp its utterance, by which 

 method they deceive an unaccustomed ear very easily. Im- 

 mediately before starting off from where they are perched, 

 they stop their note short, and a moment after are on 

 the wing, uttering the word deck, deck ! apparently scared 

 away. 



We were listening one evening to the various calls uttered 

 by these birds in a place replete with echoes, and were 

 agreeably surprised to hear these sounds repeated by them 

 at different distances ; we imagined at first that the several 

 calls proceeded from as many different birds, until the perfect 

 regularity of the repetitions led us to detect the cause. 



When in pursuit of their prey, which chiefly consists in 

 moths and other nocturnal insects, we have seen them fly 

 round and round a bush as a moth does round the flame 

 of a candle, or like the swallows in sweeping rounds 

 high and low, and falling over in the manner of tumbler 

 pigeons, or rolling in the air like a ship at sea, or a kite 



