NIGHT-HAWK 



69 



direction. Sometimes they are accompanied by at least twice as 

 many Barn Swallows, some Chimney Swallows and Purple Mar- 

 tins. They are also most numerous immediately preceding a north- 

 east storm. At this time also they abound in the extensive mea- 

 dows on the Schuylkill and Delaware, where I have counted fifteen 

 skimming over a single field in an evening. On shooting some of 

 these, on the fourteenth of August, their stomachs were almost ex- 

 clusively filled with crickets. From one of them I took nearly a 

 common snuff-box full of these insects, all seemingly fresh swal- 

 lowed. 



By the middle or twentieth of September very few of these 

 birds are to be seen in Pennsylvania; how far south they go, or 

 at what particular time they pass the southern boundaries of the 

 United States I am unable to say. None of them winter in Georgia. 



The ridiculous name Goatsucker, which was first bestowed on 

 the European species from a foolish notion that it sucked the teats 

 of the goats, because probably it inhabited the solitary heights 

 where they fed, which nickname has been since applied to the whole 

 genus, I have thought proper to omit. There is something worse 

 than absurd in continuing to brand a whole family of birds with a 

 knavish name, after they are universally known to be innocent of 

 the charge. It is not only unjust, but tends to encourage the be- 

 lief in an idle fable that is totally destitute of all foundation. 



The Night-Hawk is nine inches and a half in length, and 

 twenty-three inches in extent; the upper parts are of a very deep 

 blackish brown, unmixed on the primaries, but thickly sprinkled 

 or powdered on the back scapulars and head with innumerable mi- 

 nute spots and streaks of a pale cream color, interspersed with 

 specks of reddish ; the scapulars are barred with the same, also 

 the tail coverts and tail, the inner edges of which are barred with 

 white and deep brownish black for an inch and a half from the 

 tip, where they are crossed broadly with a band of white, the two 

 middle ones excepted, which are plain deep brown, barred and 

 VOL. v. s 



