Identifier: birdcraftfield00wrig (find matches)
Title: Birdcraft : a field book of two hundred song, game, and water birds
Year: 1897 (1890s)
Authors: Wright, Mabel Osgood, 1859-1934 Fuertes, Louis Agassiz, 1874-1927
Subjects: Birds -- United States
Publisher: New York : Macmillan Co.
Contributing Library: American Museum of Natural History Library
Digitizing Sponsor: Biodiversity Heritage Library

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uilds none, but substitutes a mossy hollow in rock or ground. Uggs: 2, creamy-white, freely marked, and spotted with brown. Range: Eastern United States to the Plains, south to Guatemala. TMs weird bird, with its bristling, fly-trap mouth, whosleeps all day and prowls by night, comes to us late in April,if the season is warm, clamouring and waking strange echoesin the bare woods, and in early September, mute and mys-terious, he gathers his flocks and moves silently on, for theWhip-poor-will has not at any time even a transient hometo abandon; like the pilgrims of old, the earth is his onlybed. This bird is somewhat erratic in its local distribution.It is noted here as a common summer resident, yet is sel-dom heard within two miles of the beach, except in thespring migration, and I have never but once found it inthe garden. After crossing the Greenfield Hill Ridge, thenumbers increase, and in the wooded hollow below ReddingRidge they are so numerous as to make the early nightnoisy. 190
Text Appearing After Image:
to SONGLESS BIRDS. Nighthawk Many people are familiar with, the cry who have neverseen the bird itself; for Nature has taken great pains toblend the colours of its plumage with the browns and graysof the bark and rocks of the forest, and has given it theunusual habit of sitting lengthwise on the branch when itperches, so that it is invisible from below, and so closelyresembles the branch against which it is so flattened as toescape notice. The Whip-poor-will prefers the forest solitude, but in hisnocturnal flights he often comes near houses, and sometimescalls close to a window with startling vehemence. The breeding-habits of this strange bird are not the leastof its peculiarities; when the ground-laid eggs are hatched,they are beset by many dangers from weasels, snakes, etc.,but the young birds are almost invisible to the human eye,even if their location is known. The female is very adroit,and if she thinks her family has been discovered she willmove them to another place, carrying t

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