The flight of the nighthawk is free and graceful in the extreme. Soaring
through space without any apparent motion of its wings, suddenly it darts with
amazing swiftness like an erratic bat after the fly, mosquito, beetle, or moth
that falls within the range of its truly hawk-like eye.
Usually the nighthawks hunt in little companies in the most sociable fashion.
Late in the summer they seem to be almost gregarious. They fly in the early
morning or late afternoon with beak wide open, hawking for insects, but except
when the moon is full they are not known to go a-hunting after sunset. During
the heat of the day and at night they rest on limbs of trees, fence-rails,
stone walls, lichen-covered rocks or old logs -- wherever Nature has provided
suitable mimicry of their plumage to help conceal them.
With this object in mind, they quite as often choose a hollow surface of rock
in some waste pasture or the open ground on which to deposit the two
speckled-gray eggs that sixteen days later will give birth to their family.
But in August, when family cares have ended for the season, it is curious to
find this bird of the thickly wooded country readily adapting itself to city
life, resting on Mansard roofs, darting into the streets from the housetops,
and wheeling about the electric lights, making a hearty supper of the little,
winged insects they attract.
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