The life of yon trim Shakspeare, on the tree?”
It has been my good fortune to find one, but only one, nest of this bird. It was placed on a horizontal branch about fifteen feet above the ground, and was a neat, compact structure, decorated on the outside with grayish lichens and moss, giving it the appearance of an excrescence on the limb.[6] It is said by those who have closely examined the nests, that they are handsomely built and ornamented, and are equalled only by the dainty houses of the humming-bird and the blue-gray gnat-catcher. The eggs, usually four in number, are of a creamy white hue, beautifully embellished with a wreath of lavender and purplish-brown around the larger end or near the centre.
Though our bird prefers solitary places for his home, he is far from shy, if you call on him in his haunt in the wildwood. He will sit fearless on his perch, even if you come quite near, looking at you in his staid, philosophical way, as if you were scarcely worth noticing. Nor will he hush his song at your approach, although he does not seem to care whether you listen to him or not. It is seldom that he can be betrayed into doing an undignified act; and even if he does almost turn a somersault in pursuing a refractory miller, he recovers his poise the next moment, and settles upon his perch with as much sang froid as if nothing unusual had occurred. Altogether, the wood-pewee is what Bradford Torrey would call a “character in feathers.”
XII.
A PAIR OF NIGHT-HAWKS.
The night-hawk and the whippoorwill are often confounded by persons of inaccurate habits of observation. It is true, both birds are members of the goatsucker family; but they belong to entirely different genera, and are therefore of much more distant kin than many people suppose. The whippoorwill is a forest bird, while the night-hawk prefers the open country. Besides, the whippoorwill is decidedly nocturnal in his habits, making the woods ring at night, as every one knows, with his weird, flutelike melody; whereas the night-hawk is a bird of the day and evening. Then, a peculiar mark of the night-hawk is the round white spot on his wings, visible on the under surface as he performs his wonderful feats overhead,—a mark that does not distinguish his woodland relative.
As a rule, the gloaming is the favorite time for the night-hawk’s wing-exercises; then he may be seen whirling, curveting, mounting, and plunging, often at a dizzy height, gathering his supper of insects as he flies; but his petulant call is often heard at other hours of the day, perhaps at noon when the sun is shining with fierce warmth. Even during a shower he seems to be fond of haunting the cloudy canopy, toying with the wind.
His call, as he tilts overhead, is difficult to represent phonetically, both the vowels and consonants being provokingly elusive and hard to catch. To me he seems usually to say Spe-ah. Sometimes the S appears to be omitted, or is enunciated very slightly, while at other times his call seems to have a decidedly sibilant beginning. On several occasions he seemed to pronounce the syllable Scape.
I had often watched the marvellous flight of these birds, as they passed like living silhouettes across the sky; but they had always seemed so shy and unapproachable that, prior to the summer of 1891, I had despaired of ever finding a night-hawk’s nest. However, one evening in June, while stalking about in the marsh, I suddenly became aware of a large bird fluttering uneasily about me in the gathering darkness. Presently it was joined by its mate, and then the two birds circled and hovered about, often coming into uncomfortable proximity with my head, and muttering under their breath, Chuckle! chuckle! Several times one of them alighted for a few moments on the rail-fence near by, and then resumed its circular flight. Even in the darkness I recognized that my uncanny companions were night-hawks, and felt convinced that there must be a nest in the neighborhood, or they would not display so much anxiety. It was too late to discover their secret that evening, and, besides, I really felt a slight chill creeping up my back, with those dark, ghostly forms wheeling about my head, and so I went reluctantly home.
Two days later I found time to visit the marsh. On reaching the spot where the two birds had been seen, presto! a dark feathered form started up before me from the ground. It was the female night-hawk; and there on the damp earth, without the least trace of a nest or a covering of any kind, lay two eggs. At last I had found a night-hawk’s nest! The ground-color of the eggs, which were quite large, was of a dirty bluish-gray cast, mottled and clouded with darker gray and brown.
The behavior of the mother bird was curious. She had fluttered away a few rods, pretending to be hurt, and then dropped into the grass. On my driving her from her hiding-place, she rose in the air and began to hover about above my head, and then, to my utter surprise, she swooped down toward me savagely, as if she really had a mind to attack me. As I walked away, she seemed to grow angrier and bolder, making a swift dash at me every few minutes, and actually coming so near my head as to cause me involuntarily to raise my cane in self-defence. A quaver of uneasiness went through me. I really believe she would have struck me had I given her sufficient provocation. There was a brisk shower falling at the time, and so, fearing the eggs might become addled, I hurried to the remote end of the marsh. Suddenly my feathered pursuer disappeared. Wondering if she had resumed her place on the nest, I sauntered back to settle the doubt, but presently espied her sitting lengthwise on a top rail of the fence, while her eggs lay unprotected in the rain. Her dark, mottled form and sleepy, half-closed eyes made a quaint picture. I slowly withdrew, and as long as I could see her with my glass, she kept her perch on the rail without moving a pinion.