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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.
And indeed, Bevis, my dear, I have myself seen several night-jars about here, and I am rather inclined to think that there is some truth in this part at least of what Choo Hoo says; for it is an old proverb, which I daresay you have heard, that when the gods design the destruction of a monarch they first make him mad, and what can be more mad than Kapchack's proposed marriage with the jay, to which he was doubtless instigated by the night-jars, who, like genii of the air, have been floating in the dusky summer twilight round about his palace?
In another closely-allied genus of night-jars, the shafts of the elongated wing-feathers are naked, except at the extremity, where there is a disc. In general the feathers of the tail are more often elongated than those of the wings, as any great elongation of the latter impedes flight.
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.
There was no moon, no stars, no wind; the cattle were noiseless under the trees; there were no owls calling, no night-jars churring, the fly-by-night chafers were not abroad. The stream alone was alive in the quiet darkness.
Thus the wing-feathers in one of the above-mentioned night-jars are bare along the shaft, and terminate in a disc; or are, as they are sometimes called, spoon or racket-shaped. In these latter birds, similar feathers, beautifully ocellated, ornament the head, as is likewise the case with some gallinaceous birds.
You wait till night, and I'll open our bedroom window, and you can hear them craking away down in the meadows. You never can tell whereabouts they are, though, and you very seldom see them. They're light brown birds." We were walking on now, and twice over he stopped, smiling at me, so that I could listen to the night-jars, making their whirring noise in the wood.
The uproar of beasts, birds, and insects lasts but a short time; the sky quickly loses its intense hue, and the night sets in. Then begin the tree-frogs Quack, quack! Drum, drum! Hoo, hoo! These, accompanied by melancholy night-jars, keep up their monotonous cries till late at night. The night, however, is not given over to darkness.
What sort of bird could they be? Were they night-jars? Were they different kinds of birds snatching at the quiet of the night for a dust bath in the sand? This little independent thread of inquiry ran through the texture of his mind and died away.... And at one place there was a great bolting of rabbits across the road, almost under his wheels....
He describes also how several male night-jars repeatedly plunge through the air with astonishing rapidity, suddenly turning, and thus making a singular noise; "but no sooner has the female made her choice than the other males are driven away." I have observed also that the older the birds the shorter were the preliminaries of their courtship.
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