The Texas Nighthawk 
Although so careless of her eggs at first, the bird’s attachment 
grows as incubation advances. So devoted does she become that she 
will suffer the intruder at three or four feet, and has even been taken by 
the hand. The assertion that the Texas Nighthawk does not employ 
the decoy ruse is incorrect, for when the chicks are hatched the mother 
will flutter away enticingly, like any other ground-nesting species. The 
young birds are much lighter in coloration than the parent, being assimi¬ 
lated, apparently, to the stronger lighting which prevails in summer. 
A baby Texas, squatting motionless in a naked stretch of alkali, is the 
acme of invisibility, for its warm silvery tints exhibit the very sheen of 
the impregnated earth. Two crops of babies are due in one season, and 
nesting ranges from the middle of April to the first week in August. 
Oberholser, in his Monograph of the genus Chordeiles , gives April 
as the month of arrival for this species “in the southwestern United 
States,” with an exceptional record of March 21st, and others in the 
middle of May. Our records would indicate that arrival during the last 
week in March is at least not exceptional. Dr. Grinnell saw one individ¬ 
ual at Chemehuevis on March 9th, 1910, but did not observe another in 
the Lower Colorado Valley until March 27th. I saw a single bird at 
Long Beach on the evening of January 30th, 1911, and Mr. C. B. Linton, 
who was with me, agreed that it could be none other than this species. 
The return movement sets in in September, but October records are 
not rare. 
The name acutipennis is, of course, most unfortunate, for the wing 
of C. a. texensis is not as “acute” as that of C. m. hesperis. While the 
relative length of the outer primaries is variable in both species, the 
outermost is longer than the next ones (hence the wing more pointed) in 
85 percent of the cases in C. minor; while it is shorter (with the tip of the 
wing definitely rounded) in 75 per cent of the examples of C. acutipennis. 
Endless confusion, therefore, exists in all sight records, especially along 
the northern limits of this bird’s range. Careful discrimination will 
probably show that texensis is gradually extending its range northward, 
and it may be expected to appear in time as far north as Red Bluff or 
Redding. 
1069 
