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It is almost the only frugivorous nocturnal bird that is yet known; the conformation of its feet sufficiently shows that it does not hunt like our owls. It feeds on very hard fruits, as the Nutcracker and the Pyrrhocorax. The latter nestles also in clefts of rocks, and is known under the name of night-crow.
"Birds of omen dark and foul, Night-crow, raven, bat, and owl, Leave the sick man to his dream All night long he heard your scream Haste to cave and ruin'd tower, Ivy, tod, or dingled bower, There to wink and mope, for, hark! In the mid air sings the lark. "Hie to moorish gills and rocks, Prowling wolf and wily fox, Hie you fast, nor turn your view, Though the lamb bleats to the ewe.
It was such a scene that Fletcher pictured to himself, when he extolled the halcyon lot of the fisherman: Ah! would thou knewest how much it better were To bide among the simple fisher-swains: No shrieking owl, no night-crow lodgeth here, Nor is our simple pleasure mixed with pains.
The latter nestles also in clefts of rocks, and is known by the name of the night-crow. The Indians assured us that the guacharo does not pursue either the lamellicornous insects or those phalaenae which serve as food to the goatsuckers. A comparison of the beaks of the guacharo and the goatsucker serves to denote how much their habits must differ.
He listened to the nuptial song of the insects above the lime trees, which rings in our ears like a funeral dirge: he heard the purring call of the night-crow; the ardent mewing of the cat, which sounds as if death, and not life, were wooing; the humming note of the dung-beetle, the fluttering of the large moths, the thin peeping of the bats.
"I am the dwarf Nectabanus," said the abortion-seeming male, in a voice corresponding to his figure, and resembling the voice of the night-crow more than any sound which is heard by daylight. "And I am Guenevra, his lady and his love," replied the female, in tones which, being shriller, were yet wilder than those of her companion.
I plucked up a spirit, I made Harry laugh as of old, though my heart smote me, as I thought how he was wont to be answered by my master. I even brooked to jest with the night-crow, as my own poor lord called this Nan Boleyn.
Wolsey himself spoke of her under the title of "the night-crow," as the person to whom he owed all which was most cruel in his treatment; as "the enemy that never slept, but studied and continually imagined, both sleeping and waking, his utter destruction."
I plucked up a spirit, I made Harry laugh as of old, though my heart smote me, as I thought how he was wont to be answered by my master. I even brooked to jest with the night-crow, as my own poor lord called this Nan Boleyn.
The night-crow crouches on the newly-dug flower-bed to lure its mate. Which of the eager males shall carry the prize? Let them decide the question! The cat, sleek and warm, fresh from her evening milk, steals away from her corner by the hearth and picks her way carefully among daffodils and lilies, afraid lest the dew make her coat damp and ragged before her lover joins her.
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