Identifier: birdcraftfieldbo01wrig (find matches)
Title: Birdcraft : a field book of two hundred song, game, and water birds
Year: 1895 (1890s)
Authors: Wright, Mabel Osgood, 1859-1934
Subjects: Birds
Publisher: New York : Macmillan
Contributing Library: Smithsonian Libraries
Digitizing Sponsor: Smithsonian Libraries

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, though I have not found its nests,I have seen the birds all the way from Mill River to Red-ding under circumstances that point to their breeding insingle pairs. They are nocturnal, as the name indicates, and whenyou come upon them in their roosts by daylight they aredazed and sleepy, and use an effort to pull themselves to-gether, but at twilight their heavy, dark bodies may beseen flying overhead, identified beyond question by the cry, quok-quok, uttered at regular intervals. The sound is muchlike that emitted by the kid bellows of a childs toy rooster,and is the gazoo of the night orchestra. The skirl andboom of the Nighthawk have an eery sound, and the Whip- 254 PLATE XIV. 2. Mallard ( 3. Redhead ( 4. American Merganser ( 5. Brant ( G. Bufflehead ( 7. Old Squaw ( 8. Pintail . . . ( 9. Canvasback • • ( 10. Black Duck ( FOR DESCRIP- TION SEE PAGE 30ut i natural size) 260 • tV • ) 2o(> li 1 u8 ■ ) 262 i ) 2.55 tV 267 i ) 264 U 1 4t 8 ) 265 LI. 1 U8 ) 259 i ) 262 i ) 257
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SWIMMING BIRDS. Ducks poor-wills cry is filled with vague foreboding; the NightHerons merely suggests that he has half swallowed aparticularly unappetizing frog, and wishes to unswallow it. This is the most gregarious of all the Herons. Dr. Woodtells of a swamp some miles from East Windsor, Conn.,which was the breeding-place of thousands. Samuels knewof a Heronry near Dedham, Mass., where a hundred pairswere collected in the space of an acre, and he at oncerealized the force of AVilsons comment on a like congrega-tion, that, The noise of the old and the yoimg would almostinduce one to suppose that two or three hundred IndiansAvere throttling each other. As the birds resort, year after year, to the same crowdedbreeding-grounds, it can be easily imagined that theseHeronries are not the most attractive places for ornitho-logical research. I had very much doubted the present existence of suchextensive colonies in populous regions, but Mr. Chapman inhis Guide to the Birds found near New Yo

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