. The home life of wild birds; a new method of the study and photography of birds. Birds; Photography of birds. CHAPTER IX. THE REARING OF THE NIGHT HAWK. IN crossing a cltaring one day in June I flushed a Night Hawk, who showed by her beha\'ior that the little depression from which she rose contained something of great interest to both the bird and myself. She was indeed incubating a single marbled gray egg, which lay on a marbled<gray patch of earth still covered with ashes and cinder. The bird retired quietly, dropping with a thud to the ground a few feet away. Two days later, if my esti
. The home life of wild birds; a new method of the study and photography of birds. Birds; Photography of birds. CHAPTER IX. THE REARING OF THE NIGHT HAWK. IN crossing a cltaring one day in June I flushed a Night Hawk, who showed by her beha\'ior that the little depression from which she rose contained something of great interest to both the bird and myself. She was indeed incubating a single marbled gray egg, which lay on a marbled<gray patch of earth still covered with ashes and cinder. The bird retired quietly, dropping with a thud to the ground a few feet away. Two days later, if my estimate is correct, a young Night Hawk cracked his shell neatly in two and emerged to the light of day. When first seen on the twenty-sixth of June, he was well clothed in down, and looked like a little flattened ball of fluffy worsted, of a dark cream color mot- tled with brown, colors which harmonize well with the usual tints of the soil. You had to look a second time to detect the stub of a beak at the base of which the large round nostrils were sufficiently prominent. Whenever this bird was aroused from its all-day slumbers the eyelids would gradually open and disclose a pair of large, soft, deep blue eyes, the lower lids showing decided angular contours which became more striking as the bird grew. The mother brooded during the heat of the day or sat as if dozing beside her charge. When surprised at such times she rose and with feathers erect and tail spread fluttered off in a slow shambling manner as if to encourage pursuit. With her feathers raised and her huge mouth wide open or the mandible \'ibrating up and down, with an audible snap- ping sound, as if set on springs, this bird presented a curious appearance, recalling the not wholly dissimilar behavior which eagles display when stirred by similar emotions. 8u. Fig. 69. Night Hawk and eggshells from which it emerged, old, June 27, igoo. Three days. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectbirds, bookyear1901
