Glendale, Mass.
1911.
Sept 4.
(No 4)
[September 4, 1911]

Remarkable flight of Night-hawks.

making out almost every detail of characteristic form and coloring including
the white spots on the wings. During the certain time that I had them
in view no one of them left the closely-compacted flock or flew for a
single yard in the customary manner. Their individual movements were
most nearly like those of soaring Hawks although the general effect on my
eye and mind of the crowded, revolving, intercrossing members of the entire
swarm was exceedingly like that produced by a flock of Herring Gulls, soaring
in company, as they so often do during calm days in late autumn,
high in air over the country lying between Charles River & Fresh Pond.
Just why all the night-hawks should have been indulging in so
remarkable a performance at this time & place is difficult to comprehend.
If, as seems most probable, they were migrating it seems strange
that they should have chosen to do so in this leisurely way and
during the early afternoon of a brilliantly clear day. Perhaps they
were engaged in reconnoitring in quest of distant landmarks but the fact
that they were all the while below the crests of the surrounding mountains
& not apparently trying to rise above them (they seemed to keep to the same
elevation while I watched them) would seem to discredit such an inference.