Vietnam or Thailand ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
Updated: June 7, 2025
Quite late at night she was visited by the Opossum, the Native Bear, and the Nightjar, who entered by the open window, and, sitting in the moonlight, conversed about the day's events. They said that their whole rest and sleep had been disturbed by the noise and excitement of the day creatures spreading the news through the Bush.
The most characteristic feature of a nightjar is its enormous frog-like mouth; but it is not easy to make this out in the twilight or darkness, so that the observer has to rely on other features in order to recognise goatsuckers when he sees them on the wing, such as their long tail and wings, their curious silent fluttering flight, their dark plumage with white or buff in the wings and tail, their crepuscular and nocturnal habits, and their large size.
Yet it was not unpleasing, this queer shrill, recurrent rhythm, the monotonous creak and splash of the oars, the mystery of feeling one's way in the blue gloom, through reed and water-lily beds, up this cliff-bound river, and far away the faint twitter also recurrent and monotonous of some nightjar.... The night grew bitterly cold on the water.
The common thrush often sings far into the night, and the sedge-warbler is a persistent caroller that has often been mistaken for the nightingale. The difference in this respect between the two subjects of these remarks is that the nightjar is invariably silent all through the day, whereas the nightingale sings joyously at all hours.
What a gap there is between the sobbing cadences of the nightingale and the rasping note of the nightjar, which, with specific reference to a Colonial cousin of that bird Tasmanians ingeniously render as "more pork"! It seems almost ludicrous to include under the head of birdsong not only the music of the nightingale, but also the croak of the raven and the booming note of the ostrich.
Quite late at night she was visited by the Opossum, the Native Bear, and the Nightjar, who entered by the open window, and, sitting in the moonlight, conversed about the day's events. They said that their whole rest and sleep had been disturbed by the noise and excitement of the day creatures spreading the news through the Bush.
We did not reach the inn at Brockenhurst until about nine o'clock, just at nightfall, and a few minutes before that we heard a nightjar. It did not sound in the least like either our whip-poor-will or our night-hawk, uttering a long-continued call of one or two syllables, repeated over and over. The chaffinch was very much in evidence, continually chaunting its unimportant little ditty.
Pericles listened; wearing an aching expression, as if he were sending one eye to look up into his brain for a judgement disputed in that sovereign seat. Still she held on, and then gave a tremulous, rich, contralto note. "Oh! the human voice!" cried Adela, overcome by the transition of tones. "Like going from the nightingale to the nightjar," said Arabella. Mrs.
Seed and stone, blade and berry, hot blood and cold, did her bidding and slept or stirred at her ordinance. A nightjar harshly whirred beneath her footstool; wan tongues of flame rose and fell upon her quaking altars; a mountain fox, pattering quick-footed to the rabbit warren, caught light from those exhalations in his round, green eyes and barked.
The Nightjar occasionally remains very late in the Islands, as Miss Carey records one in the 'Zoologist' for 1872 as occurring on the 16th of October; and I have one killed as late as the 12th of November: this bird had its stomach crammed with black beetles, not our common domestic nuisances, but small winged black beetles: these dates are later than the Nightjar usually remains in England, though Yarrell notices one in Devon as late as the 6th of November, and one in Cornwall on the 27th of November.
Word Of The Day
Others Looking