Bird Stories

Nightjar family. But he wasn't a bull and he wasn't a bat and he wasn't a hawk and he wasn't a jar; and he flew more by day than by night, and he ne

It was a gray and brown and creamy buff-and-white sort of coat, quite mottled, with a rather plain, nearly black, back. It was trimmed with white, there being a white stripe near t

e well worth noticing; for besides just flying with them,-which was wonderful enough, as he was a t

better right, for they have solid earth to strut upon and run no risks, while Mis did his whole trick in the air. It was a kind of acrobatic feat, though he had no gymnasium with bars or rings or tight

s tent of wide-arched sky. If you wanted to see him, you could-ticket or no ticket. That was nothi

alf-closed, he dropped toward the earth. Could he stop such speed, or must he strike and kill himself in

lying

ad of down. He might be within a second of dashing himself to death against the ground, but so sure were his wings and so strong his muscles, that a second was time and to spare for him to stop and turn and rise again toward the safe height f

men matter to him? Had not his fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers given high-air circus performances of a springtime, in the days when b

hether the little acrobat was showing his mate what a splendid fellow he was, how strong of wing and skillful in the tricks of flight? Be that as it may, the mate

ut what sort of neighborhood they should choose for their home; for th

as. But then, when a clown goes merrily forth to find him a home, we must not be surprised if he is funny about it. It was where the sun could shine upon it; though how Mis and his mate knew that, all on a dull, dark afternoon, I'm sure I can't tell. Maybe bec

on the flat roof of a very high building in a very large city. Their house-lot was cove

hing happened. She disappeared from sight. As long as she didn't move, she couldn't be seen. Her dappled feathers didn't look like a bird. They looked like the light and dark of the pebbles of the flat roof. Ah, so that was the one thing more that was necessary for her home, bes

et of Mother Nature that even the wisest men in the world have not explained. But this we do know, that when her instincts led Mother Nomer to choose the pebbly roof as a background for her mottled feathers, she did just naturally very much the same thing that the soldiers in the world-war did when they made use of great guns painted to look like things they were not, and ships painted to look like the waves beneath them and the clouds in the sky above. Only, the soldiers did not use their protective coloration naturally and by instinct. They di

much longer than that. No, so far as color went, Mother Nomer might have chosen a spot in an open field, where there were little broken sticks or stones to give it a mottled look-such a place, indeed, as her

came and sat on the same spot. If you had been there to see them come and go, you would have wondered why they cared about that particular spot. It looked like the rest of the sunny roof-just little humps of light and dark. Ah, y

e balls of down, though you couldn't have seen them either, unless you had been about near enough to touch them; for the downy children of Mis

indeed, had been

city streets came up to her; but that was from far below, and things far off are not worth worrying about. Sometimes, too,

tling loudly as he worked. All this frightened little Mother Nomer. There is no doubt about that, for her heart beat more and more quickly. But she didn't budge. She couldn't. It was a part of her camouflage trick to sit still in danger. The greater the danger, the still

fluttered pitifully about, her wings and tail spread wide and dragging as she moved lamely. She did not look like a part of the pebbly roof now. She showed plainly, for she was moving. She looked like a wounded bird, and the man, thinking he must have hurt her in some way, followed her to pick her up and see what the trouble was

a partridge, fluttering as if broken-winged, had led him through the underbrush of the wood-lot; and once a bird by the river-side stumbled on before him, cryi

oung. The little Nomer twins were not the son and daughter of Mis, the clown, and Mother Nomer, the trick cripple, for nothi

could practise th

oods where the whip-poor-wills called o' nights. His thoughts made a boy of him again, and he forgot everything else in the world in his wish to see the little birds he felt sure must be among the pebbles before him. So he crept about carefully, here and there, and at last came upon the children of Mis. He picked up the fluffy little balls of down and snuggled them gently in his big hands for a moment. Then he put them

r feathers, her heart still beating quickly with the excitement of her scare, it would be easy to guess from the dear way of her cuddling that it isn't a beautiful woven cradle or quaint walls of clay that matter most in the life of young birds, but the lo

down his throat. And when the big, brown bumping beetles, with hard, shiny wing-covers on their backs and soft, fuzzy velvet underneath, flew out at dusk, twenty or thirty of them, as likely as not, would make a luncheon for Mis the clown. For he was lean and hungry, and he ate and ate and ate; but he never grew fat. He hunted zigzag through the twilight of the evening and the twilight of the dawn. When the nights were bright and game was plenty, he hunted zigzag through the moonlight. When th

to be hunters. Mis and his kind swept the air, of course, because they and their young were hungry; but the game they caught, had it gone free to lay its m

f his head under his eyes. It opened up more like the mouth of a frog or a toad than like that of most birds. When he hunted he kept it yawning wide open, so that it made a trap for many an unlucky insect that flew s

ds do when they stop to rest; for, instead of sitting on a twig when he was not flying, he would settle as if lying down. Sometimes he stayed on a large level branch, not cross-wise like most birds, but the long way; and when he did that, he looked like a humpy knot on the branch. When there were no branches handy, he

There is a reason why I am not. The reason is, that I do not know. To be sure, I have heard nighthawks say it every summ

ill, who wears whiskers, for instance; and Cousin Chuck-will's widow, who wears whiskers that branch. You could tell from their very names that they would do uncommon things. And as for their more distant relatives, the Hummingbird

r, perhaps, though not enough to be noticed under their feathers. Toward the end of a pleasant summer, they joined a company of their kind, a sort of traveling circus, and went south for

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