- 77 - 
A strange 
Goatsucker 
( Lurocalis ) 
A little after sunset the Carrs took us to a place 
where they had seen some Goatsuckers flying about in the 
twilight a few evenings since. It proved to be a stretch 
of the public road, broad, straight, covered with a carpet 
of beautiful green turf, bordered on one side by a. cacao 
plantation with a deserted house surrounded by bananas, on 
the other by a sloping hillside covered with dense prime¬ 
val forest. It must be a beautiful spot at any time but 
in the soft evening light it was simply enchanting. The 
Goatsuckers were there — two of them, flying back and forth 
along the road, usually skimming close over the turf, but 
occasionally rising 20 or 30 feet straight up after an 
insect. They turned quite regularly when they reached the 
end of the woods into which they also plunged several 
times. Their flight was very swift and, as a rule, direct. 
■* 
They flapped their wings steadily and quickly with a motion 
unlike that of any of our Goatsuckers’ and more like that 
of a large bat, but the flight was more firm and direct 
than that of any bat with which I am familiar. When they 
took to the woods, they usually gave a succession of 
short, clear whistles, probably from some perch on the 
ground or the branch of a tree, although this is merely a 
surmise on our part. We shot both birds and found them 
to be males of Lurocalis semitorquatus (Gm.). They are 
curious-looking Goatsuckers, intermediate in both form, 
color and behavior, as it seems to us, bet?^een Ghordegtiles 
and Antrostomus. 
