Nighthawk

Aiton's Encyclopedia (1910)

a bird closely related to the whip-poor-will and often confounded with it. The nighthawk, bull-bat, or nightjar, as it is called, is a trifle larger than the whip-poor-will. It has darker plumage, with a broader white band on the breast and a conspicuous white bar on the shortest wing coverts. The nighthawk sits lengthwise on the limb of a tree. In prairie regions it rests on the bare ground during the day. Toward nightfall and on cloudy afternoons, or shortly after sunset and until far into the night, it flies at great heights coursing after insects. Diving in mid-air is a favorite exercise. It circles about giving a nasal call as if to attract attention, then dives downward as though to destruction, but turns upward abruptly with a b-o-o-r-r-r-r-r, suggesting the British name of nightjar. "We heard the nighthawk's sullen plunge," says Whittier. The nighthawk breeds in eastern North America from the Gulf to Labrador, and winters in South America . Two dull white eggs with fine grayish brown specks are laid on bare ground in open fields, on the plains, or even on the gravel roofs of city buildings. Nests have been found for many years on the gravel roofs of the Minneapolis flour mills. At eventide the birds swoop around the Falls of St. Anthony in pursuit of insects. Thoreau likens the young to "a pinch of rabbit's fur, or down of that color, dropped on the ground, not two inches long, with a dimpling, somewhat regular arrangement of minute feathers in the middle destined to become the wings and tail."