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Late of afternoon it used to be, while the nighthawks dashed overhead in their air-hunts, showing the white spots in their wings that looked like holes, and sometimes making him jump as they dropped and turned, with a sudden "boom."
He had expected their occupants to be asleep, for they were nighthawks who reversed man's usual order in the prosecution of nocturnal and ill-favored trades. He was astonished to note a general activity.
The eave swallow and barn swallow and the chimney swift all belie their names in the few wild haunts still uninvaded by man. The first two were originally cliff and bank haunters, and the latter's home was a lightning-hollowed tree. But the nighthawks which soar and boom above our city streets, whence come they? Do they make daily pilgrimages from distant woods?
Suddenly as they come as suddenly go the fly-by-nights, that pitch and toss on dusky barred wings above the field of summer twilights. Never one of these nighthawks will you see after linnet time, though the hurtle of their wings makes a pleasant sound across the dusk in their season.
If there were charred stumps of trees in the Bracken which was shown to Faust, we should expect to see nighthawks squatted on them, wholly indifferent to the lamentations of lost souls. We go directly under the branch where one of them is sitting ten feet above and still he makes no sign. We throw a clod, but yet there is no movement of his wings.
"I beg your pardon, Jenny Wren," said Peter very humbly. "Of course Whip-poor-will has whiskers if you say so. By the way, do the Whip-poor-wills do any better in the matter of a nest than the Nighthawks?" "Not a bit," replied Jenny Wren. "Mrs. Whip-poor-will lays her eggs right on the ground, but usually in the Green Forest where it is dark and lonesome. Like Mrs. Nighthawk, she lays only two.
Nighthawks also eat grasshoppers, potato-beetles, cucumber-beetles, boll-weevils, leaf-hoppers, and numerous gnats and mosquitoes. Surely this splendid representative of the Goatsucker family deserves the gratitude of all American citizens. Among the branches of certain of our fruit trees we sometimes see large webs which have been made by the tent caterpillars.
There seemed to be a great owl hooting from every hollow tree, and a little one screeching from every knothole. The bellowing of big bullfrogs was not sufficiently deafening to shut out the wailing of whip-poor-wills that seemed to come from every bush. Nighthawks swept past him with their shivering cry, and bats struck his face. A prowling wildcat missed its catch and screamed with rage.
Almost all the others brown thrushes, bluebirds, song sparrows, kingbirds, hen-hawks, nighthawks, whip-poor-wills, woodpeckers, etc. simply tried to avoid being seen, to draw or drive us away, or paid no attention to us. We used to wonder how the woodpeckers could bore holes so perfectly round, true mathematical circles. We ourselves could not have done it even with gouges and chisels.
No sooner had the words left Tom's mouth than four men stepped forward. "And were you in the trouble, too?" the Squire questioned. "Yes, sir," the spokesman replied. "We was with Tom an' Pete. We're guilty, too." "Well, I must say you are a fine bunch of nighthawks," and the Squire gave a slight, sarcastic laugh. "You should be thoroughly ashamed of yourselves."
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