166 HANDBOOK OF BRITISH INLAND BIRDS 
and rarely appears in its breeding quarters before 
the middle of May, while it is not uncommon to 
find fresh eggs in July. No nest is made, and the 
eggs are laid upon the bare ground, or on the 
natural carpet of moss or dead bracken-stems 
which covers it in their chosen haunts. The eggs 
are two in number, of the same shape at either 
end, creamy white in their ground-colour, and very 
beautifully mottled and clouded with deep greenish- 
brown and lighter lilac-grey. When, as is often 
the case, they are laid on ground thickly sprinkled 
with round flint pebbles, the similarity of appear- 
ance makes them very difficult to discover ; and 
the same effect of concealment is secured by the 
likeness of the delicately mottled brown plumage 
of the sitting bird to her surroundings of dry fern- 
stalks and furze needles. But in this case, as in 
many others, it is clear that the protective like- 
ness, and consequent security of the eggs, is only 
partial and imperfect, for they are distinctly notice- 
able and conspicuous when they are laid upon a 
dry brown carpet which happens to be devoid of 
scattered whitish pebbles. When flushed from the 
furze or heather, the Nightjar generally flits ofl^ in 
absolute silence, like a brown apparition ; when 
perching on a bough of a tree, it almost invariably 
settles lengthwise to the bough, instead of across it 
in the usual bird attitude. It has an enormously 
