4 
Birds of River, Forest and Sky 
and “foam and fret” till they tossed their snowy manes! What a fascin¬ 
ating, beautiful river, with its rushing water, its green depths, its roll¬ 
ing stones, its deep-voiced plunge of rocks! How the gray water sprites 
must love its life and sparkle! How joyously must they sing their love 
songs over its dashing, glistening spray! 
The Glowing Nighthawk Prairie 
From the upper piazza of the Log House at McKenzie Bridge we 
looked across the road, with its screen of low trees behind which was a 
mountain park, part of a strip of original prairie, now yellow with 
blooming St. Johnswort, and later, when the flowers had dulled, fairly 
twinkling with small yellow butterflies, as if the golden flowers had 
taken wing! At the back of the park an enclosing wall of flr carried 
the eye up the timbered slopes of the mountains to Horse Pasture and 
the bare rocky peaks of the ridge above, said to command a wonderful 
view of the snowy peaks of the Three Sisters at the head of the Mc¬ 
Kenzie. 
Crossing the park one morning early in July, I roused a Pacific 
nighthawk sleeping on the ground, and the short mottled stick, unfold¬ 
ing long, white-banded wings, rose high in air calling Pe-uck and flying 
about with the expert tilting, rolling flight that characterizes the aero¬ 
naut. After that, at sunset, when the prairie floor glowed a dull orange 
the birds could be heard from the house and I often went out to watch 
them. Occasionally a few Vaux swifts or a passing flock of swallows 
served to give scale to the four large long-winged nighthawks which 
were said to be feeding on winged ants high in the sky, and which be¬ 
tween times indulged in aeronautic feats of courtship display. 
Back and forth over the prairie, calling continuously Pe-wick or 
Pe-uck, they flew, sometimes so low that I could see the white of their 
under parts, but generally too high to see even the wing bars, and at 
times so high that their long wings became mere thread lines and almost 
disappeared beyond the field of vision. In feeding they flew rapidly 
head on until presumably they came to quarry, when suddenly put¬ 
ting on brakes they would almost halt, and act as if snapping up insects 
with their widely gaping mouths. 
When not absorbed in catching insects, two birds would often fly 
near each other in courtship play, and sometimes three flew together, 
as if the matter of mates were not yet settled. Frequently one of the 
suitors would come swooping down close to the ground or sometimes 
only to midair, when he spread his wings wide and the air boomed loudly 
through the quills—a familiar performance indicating a peculiar fond¬ 
ness for pyrotechnics on the part of feminine onlookers. 
