The mottled brown appearance of the bird when reposing either on the ground or on the limb of a large tree, is admirably adapted to screen it from observation even within a few yards of the observer. It delights in furzy commons, wild heathery tracts, and broken hilly ground covered with ferns, particularly in the neighbourhood of woods and thickets, and is especially partial to sandy soils. I have frequently seen this bird upon the bare sand, either in a sandpit or under the lee of a furze-bush, where it appeared to be basking in the sun, and from the disturbed appearance of the soil in some places, I imagine that it dusts itself as the Skylark does, to get rid of the small parasites with which, like many other birds, it is infested. On the 16th of May this year, at Uppark, Sussex, I found one asleep on the carriage drive within twenty yards of the house. The gravel was quite warm, and the bird was so loth to be disturbed that I almost succeeded in covering it with my hat before it took wing. On another occasion in September, when strolling along the beach near Selsea, I came suddenly upon a Nightjar sitting below high-water mark on the warm shingle, where it appeared to be thoroughly enjoying the afternoon sun. It dozes away the greater part of the day, and if disturbed only flies a short distance before re-alighting. Its loud and peculiar whirring note, reminding one of the noise made by a knife-grinder’s wheel, is never heard until the evening, when, in districts where the bird is common, it resounds far and near.
There is something occasionally quite ventriloquial in the sound, caused by the bird turning its head from side to side, both up and down, and scattering, as it were, the notes on every side.
It makes no nest, but scraping a hollow on the bare ground deposits two ellipse-shaped eggs beautifully mottled with two shades of grey and brown, and quite unlike those of any other British bird. The young are hatched in about a fortnight or rather more, and until fully fledged their appearance is singularly ugly. They are covered with a grey down, and their enormous mouths and large prominent eyes give them an expression which is almost repulsive. By pegging the young down with long “jesses,” as one would a Hawk, I have secured them until fully fledged, the old birds feeding them regularly; but on taking them home and turning them into an aviary I could not succeed in keeping them long alive, owing to the difficulty in procuring suitable food, and my inability to give them constant attention.
During the month of September, when shooting amongst low underwood and felled timber, I have not unfrequently disturbed a Nightjar, and on such occasions, when flying away startled, its flight so much resembles that of a Hawk that I have twice seen a keeper shoot one, exclaiming, “There goes a Hawk!” I was not a little surprised one day at finding one of these birds in the middle of a turnip-field. We had marked down some birds at the far end, and the dogs were drawing cautiously on when one of them flushed a Nightjar, which my friend immediately shot—in mistake, as he afterwards said, for a Woodcock.
Notwithstanding what has been said to the contrary, the Nightjar, Night-hawk, Fern Owl, or Goatsucker, as it is variously called in different parts of the country, is one of the most inoffensive birds imaginable. By farmers it is accused of robbing cows and goats of their milk, and by keepers it is remorselessly shot as “vermin;” but by both classes its character is much maligned. Its food is purely insectivorous, and it is as incapable of sucking milk as it is of carrying off and preying upon young game birds. The mistake in the former case must have arisen in this way. The habits of the bird are crepuscular. It is seldom seen in broad daylight unless disturbed, but as soon as twilight supervenes and moths and dor-beetles begin to be upon the wing, it comes forth from its noonday retreat and is exceedingly busy and active in the pursuit of these and other insects. Montagu says he has observed as many as eight or ten on the wing together in the dusk of the evening, skimming over the surface of the ground in all directions, like Swallows in pursuit of insects. Cattle, as they graze in the evening, disturb numerous moths and flies, and the Nightjar, unalarmed by the animals, to whose presence it becomes accustomed, dashes boldly down to seize a moth which is hovering round their feet, or a fly which has settled upon the udder. Being detected in this act in the twilight by unobservant persons, the story has gone forth that the Goatsucker steals the milk.
From the keepers point of view it is a Night-hawk in the worst sense of the word, a hawk that under cover of the night flits noiselessly but rapidly by and carries off the unsuspecting chick. But here again the observer has been misled by appearances, associating the pointed wings and long tail with the idea of a hawk, entirely overlooking the small slender claws and mandibles, which are quite unequal to the task of holding and cutting up live and resisting feathered prey, and entirely also overlooking the fact that at the time the Nightjar is abroad, the young pheasants and partridges are safely brooded under their respective mothers.
Attentive observation of its habits, and examination of numerous specimens after death, have revealed the real nature of its food, which consists of moths, especially Hepialus humuli,[93] which from its white colour is readily seen by the bird, fernchafers and dor-beetles. Macgillivray says: “The substances which I have found in its stomach were remains of coleopterous insects of many species, some of them very large, as Geotrupes stercorarius, moths of great size also, and occasionally larvæ. I have seen the inner surface slightly bristled with the hairs of caterpillars, as in the Cuckoo.” He adds, “as no fragments of the hard parts of these insects ever occur in the intestine, it follows that the refuse is ejected by the mouth.” From its habit of capturing dor-beetles, the bird in some parts of the country is known as the Dor-hawk. Wordsworth has referred to it by this name in the lines—
“The busy Dor-hawk chases the white moth
With burring note.”
Elsewhere it is called the Eve-jar, and Churn-owl. The latter name is bestowed by Gilbert White in his “Naturalist’s Summer Evening Walk”:—