NIGHT HAWK. 
161 
small Hawks, and from its habit of flying chiefly in the 
evening. Though it is a bird universally known in the 
United States, and inhabits North America, in summer, from 
instances, with very powerful bristles. Their organs of sight are also fitted 
only for a more gloomy light. They appear only at twilight, reposing during 
the day among furze or brake, or sitting, in their own peculiar manner, on a 
branch ; but if inactive amidst the clearer light, they are all energy and action 
when their own day has arrived. To these last will belong the common Night 
Hawk of Europe ; and a detail, in comparison of its manners with those of 
our author, may assist in giving some idea of the truly nocturnal species, which 
are similar, so far as variation of country and circumstances will allow. They 
are thus, in a . few lines, accurately described by a poet whom Wilson would 
have admired : — 
Hark ! from yon quivering branch your direst foe, 
Insects of night, its whirring note prolongs. 
Loud as the sound of busy maiden’s wheel : 
Then with expanded beak, and throat enlarged 
Even to its utmost stretch, its ’custom’d food 
Pursues voracious. 
It frequents extensive moors and commons, perhaps more abundantly if they 
are either interspersed or bordered with brush or wood. At the commence- 
ment of twilight, when they are first roused from their daily slumber, they 
perch on some bare elevation of the ground, an old wall or fence, or heap of stones, 
in a moss county on a peat stack, and commence their monotonous drum, or whirr , 
closely resembling the dull sound produced by a spinning-wheel ; and possessing 
the same variation of apparent distance in the sound, a modification of ventri- 
loquism, which is perceived in the croak of the Land Rail, or the cry of the Coot 
and Water Rail, or croaking of frogs ; at one time it is so near as to cause an 
alarm that you will disturb the utterer ; at another as if the bird had removed to 
the extreme limit of the listener’s organs, while it remained unseen at a distance 
of perhaps not more than forty or fifty yards. At the commencement, this 
drumming sound seems to be continued for about ten or fifteen minutes, and 
occasionally during the night in the intervals of relaxation ; it is only, however, 
when perched that it is uttered, and never for so great a length of time as at the 
first. Their flight is never high, and is performed without any regularity ; 
sometimes straight forward and in gliding circles, with a slow, steady clap of 
the wings, in the middle of which they will abruptly start in to the air for thirty 
or forty feet, resuming their former line by a gradual fall ; at other times it 
will be performed in sudden jerks upwards, in the fall keeping the wings steady 
and closed over the back, skimming in the intervals near the ground, and still 
retaining the wings like some Gulls or Terns, or a Swallow dipping in the water, 
until they are again required to give the stroke upwards ; all the while the tail is 
much expanded, and is a conspicuous object in the male, from the white spots on 
VOL. II. 
L 
