SWIFTS 
269 
steep spirals higher and higher, and then face earthwards and come down 
nearly perpendicularly like a falling stone. As it falls a hollow dull tremolo 
buzz is heard. Just before the observer thinks the bird must dash to 
the ground it recovers itself and glides off safely to repeat the operation. 
Its notes are not musical in themselves, but, by association, they seem 
fitting to hot summer sunsets, with black steeples, and factory smoke- 
stacks silhouetted against glowing skies. Often the last thing seen at night 
is its long-winged, gracefully beating form high in the upper air, still 
illuminated by the ruddy afterglow that has deserted the lower world, while 
the harsh squawking comes down softened and harmonized by distance. 
Through the day time, the nighthawk seeks such shade as may be 
available, but evidently coolness is not a necessity to it. The writer 
remembers one stifling day in the arid lands of southern Saskatchewan 
when the breeze made by the travelling car struck like a furnace blast 
instead of giving refreshment, yet for some distance along the prairie road 
every fence-post had a dozing Nighthawk upon it, absorbing in sleepy 
content the intense heat of the mid-day sun that was shrivelling the 
surrounding vegetation. 
Economic Status. Of few birds can more good or less harm be told 
than of the Nighthawk. Its food, wholly of insects, is taken on the wing, 
high in the air where many of the insects are mating and at a time when 
their destruction does the most good. It is a surprisingly small bird when 
stripped of its thick coat of soft feathers, but requires a great amount of 
food. A list of the species taken by it includes great numbers of ants, 
June bugs, squash beetles, chinch bugs, leaf-hoppers, and other obnoxious 
species. The habit, common in some places, of using this bird as a live 
target for gunners when practising is inexcusable and those guilty of it 
should be rigorously prosecuted. It should be realized that every offence 
against the laws protecting insect-eating birds is something more than a 
technical offence against an impersonal state; it is a direct blow at the 
welfare of the whole community. 
Order — Micropodiiformes. Swifts and Hummingbirds 
An order composed of two suborders, Micropodii the swifts and 
Trochili the hummingbirds. Superficially they are quite unlike and 
probably most easily recognized under their subordinate descriptions. 
SUBORDER— MICROPODII. SWIFTS 
Mostly small birds in dull colours without much pattern or variega- 
tion. Usually, over-all colours of sooty or black. Bill very small with large 
gape. Feet weak and fleshy rather than scaled (Figure 388a and b). In 
general, resembling swallows, in detail more like the goatsuckers, but 
without the finely patterned plumages, and the feathers hard and compact 
rather than soft and full. The primaries very long, bowed, and extending 
when closed far beyond the tail (Figure 388d). It is a group of birds 
superficially resembling swallows, but structurally quite different from 
them, the similarity being brought about by common requirements and 
not by relationship (Compare Figures 388 and 400, page 298). The com- 
pactly, hard-feathered wings, the long, bowed primaries, short secondaries, 
and the peculiar wing action of the swifts are different from those of the 
swallows. The swallow beats the air with long, rythmical strokes, the swift 
buzzes through it like a beetle and then sails on stiff-set wings locked 
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