Game-Birds and Motors
We have seen a motor-car drive right over a covey of young partridges as they dusted themselves on a road, leaving half a dozen victims behind it. But motors are not entirely opposed to game interests. The dust they scatter on roadside hedges greatly helps the hiding nests. Then the frequent passing of cars along country roads is certainly a deterrent to the poacher; the shooting man in his car takes note of doubtful-looking tramps and gipsies, and can spread a swift warning to keepers or police. Even the smells of the car are a disguised blessing, overpowering the scent of the sitting bird, and so, no doubt, often preventing a dog from finding a roadside nest. The motor has sent up the value of many inaccessible shooting properties by eliminating distance. It may be useful to a shooting party when cartridges have come to an end, or at the close of a day for transporting game speedily to the station, or at any time for bringing a doctor when the bag has been enriched by the addition of a gamekeeper.
Mysteries of the Nightjar
On a midsummer night, in an old wood, the crooning of the nightjar, with its whirring, vibrant, monotonous notes, now rising, now falling in key, seems the ideal of lullaby. The beautiful night-flying swallow suffers for an evil reputation. It is a bird of mystery.
The nightjar is the last of our summer visitors, coming about the middle of May to stay until September. It is known almost the world over, but few understand its ways; birds of the night suggest evil doings and inspire superstition. The plumage has the rich, quiet beauty of the woodcock and the hen pheasant, and the feathers have the softness of the owl's. In build the bird comes between a large swift and a small hawk, and is suggestive of swift or swallow when seen close at hand, with its miniature, hawk-like bill and a mouth surprisingly capacious when open. The eggs, like the swift's, are rounded at the ends.
It is commonly called night-hawk, or dor-hawk, because it preys on dor-beetles, and it is fern-owl, because it haunts the bracken fern. It is night-crow, because when on the wing it cries a crowing note, "crow-ic," and it is jar-owl, because of its owl-like love of night and its jarring or churring song. Wheel-bird is a name derived from the wheeling flight. Other names are churn-owl, eve-churr, and night-churr; but the oldest and one of the most familiar names is goat-sucker, derived from the legend that the bird sucks milk from goats, thereby poisoning them and causing blindness. Probably some one saw the bird near a goat, did not know what it was, or anything about it, and invented the goat-sucking myth.