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How difficult it is to see a partridge, snipe, woodcock, certain plovers, larks, and night-jars when crouched on ground. Animals inhabiting deserts offer the most striking cases, for the bare surface affords no concealment, and nearly all the smaller quadrupeds, reptiles, and birds depend for safety on their colours. Mr.
He looked at the bureau at which he had so often written. But the writing there was a shrivelled thing.... This room was unendurable. He must go out. He turned to the window, and outside was a troublesome noise of night-jars and a distant roaring of stags, black trees, blacknesses, the sky clear and remote with a great company of stars.... The stars seemed attentive.
Remember, Simon remember how happy we were! Don't you remember how the night-jars used to call to one another when we sat on moonlit evenings under the elm-tree? And d'ye remember the cottage we planned, Simon? where we were going to live on bread and cheese and kisses? And how we quarrelled because I wanted to train vines over it? You said the rooms would be too dark.
The air was resonant with the purring of the night-jars, and every now and then he caught the loud clap of their wings as they swayed unsteadily through the furze and bracken. Overhead a trio of wild ducks flew across, from pond to pond, their hoarse cry descending through the darkness.
But their new equipment seems only destined to facilitate their dispersion from the parent nest, which takes place at dusk; and almost as quickly as they leave it they divest themselves of their ineffectual wings, waving them impatiently and twisting them in every direction till they become detached and drop off, and the swarm, within a few hours of their emancipation, become a prey to the night-jars and bats, which are instantly attracted to them as they issue in a cloud from the ground.
The sound of the flying night-jars died away, and the chorus of crickets and katydids began as the dusk settled down. Inside the kitchen, a detached building in which the plantation forces were now practically confined, there arose occasional sounds of half-hysterical laughter, snatches of excited talk, now and then the quavering of a hymn.
He dared not leave the shelter of the trees, so he struck into the wood, with the idea of leaving the railway as far as possible behind him. After so many weeks within walls, he found the wood strange and unfriendly and inclined, he thought, to make fun of him. Night-jars, sounding their mechanical rattle, made him think that the wood was full of searching warders, closing in on him.
"Heard plenty of owls, and night-jars, and such-like," he answered, "and foxes, and weasels, and stoats, and beetles creeping in the grass. Naught human!" The policeman resumed his helmet and sniffed audibly. He and the keeper moved away and talked together. Then the policeman turned to Neale. "Well, we'll be getting back to the village, sir," he said. "If so be as you see our super, Mr.
It was a shade cooler in the press-room than the office, so I sat there, while the type ticked and clicked, and the night-jars hooted at the windows, and the all but naked compositors wiped the sweat from their foreheads and called for water.
The season seems to have been too damp for the night-jars, though quite to the taste of all species of pigeons.
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