Stories of its chicken-stealing prove to be ignorant rather than
malicious slanders. Any one disliking the name, however, surely cannot
complain of a limited choice of other names by which, in different sections of
the country, it is quite as commonly known.
Too often it is mistaken for the whippoorwill. The night hawk does not have
the weird and woful cry of that more dismal bird, but gives instead a harsh,
whistling note while on the wing, followed by a vibrating, booming, whirring
sound that Nuttall likens to "the rapid turning of a spinning wheel, or a
strong blowing into the bung-hole of an empty hogshead." This peculiar sound
is responsible for the name nightjar, frequently given to this curious bird.
It is said to be made as the bird drops suddenly through the air, creating a
sort of stringed instrument of its outstretched wings and tail. When these
wings are spread, their large white spots running through the feathers to the
under side should be noted to further distinguish the nighthawk from the
whippoorwill, which has none, but which it otherwise closely resembles. This
booming sound, coming from such a height that the bird itself is often unseen,
was said by the Indians to be made by the shad spirits to warn the scholes of
shad about to ascend the rivers to spawn in the spring, of their impending
fate.
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