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CAPRIMULGUS EUROPALUS, Lin.

Nightjar, or Goatsucker.

Caprimulgus euwropeus, Linn. Syst. Nat., tom. 1. p. 346.

—— punctatus, Meyer, Tasch. Deutsch., tom. 1. p. 284.
——— maculatus, Brehm, Handb. der Nature. Vog. Deutsch., p. 131.
———— vulgaris, Vieillot.

 

How often do we find that ideas of the ancients are founded upon a semblance to truth ! and thus the herdsmen
of Greece and Rome seem to have concluded that this wide-mouthed bird could frequent the neighbourhood
of goats and cattle solely for the purpose indicated in the name they assigned to it; whereas it seems more
reasonable to suppose that it seeks those animals for the sake of the insects disturbed by them in the
act of grazing. A similar habit obtains in the Common Yellow Wagtail (Budytes flava), which may be daily
seen tripping round the cattle in our meads, and leaping up beneath them, for flies and other insects. There
are hundreds of people in England who to this day believe that the hedgehog also sucks the teats of cows 5
some even assert that they have seen it in the act. Now the truth is that the animal is utterly incapable of
such a feat; and, like the bird, it is doubtless attracted to the haunts of the cattle by the abundance of insect-
food there found. The Starling leaps on the backs of sheep, the Buphaga on those of the African oxen,
and the Zic-zac enters the mouth of the crocodile (so says Herodotus), all with the same object. The
ridiculous notions so prevalent with regard to the Nightjar and the hedgehog must therefore be regarded as
mere popular errors.

The European Nightjar belongs to a very extensive group of nocturnal birds, to which the family name of

es

Caprimulgide has been given. With the exception of New Zealand and Polynesia, the Arctic and Antarctic
regions, one or other of them inhabit the land portion of the entire globe. Their food, in general, consists
of insects, for the capture of which their varied forms show an especial adaptation, however different the
insects may be, from the huge Crcade and Phasmide to the most delicate moth. In their structure, these
Nocturnes are wonderfully diversified, some species being armed with lengthened and very powerful vibrissee,
as in Caprimulgus, while in others this character is entirely absent, as in Chordeiles ; some have a pectinated
middle claw, others have not; some have exceedingly wide gapes and most delicate mandibles, as
Nyctibius; others have stout horny bills, as Batrachostomus and Podargus ; some have very lengthened wings,
especially formed for aerial flight, as in Chordeiles ; others have lengthened tarsi, showing that the ground is
their natural province, as in Nyctidromus ; some are Owl-like, nest in the holes of trees, and lay white eggs,
as the Australian genus Aevotheles; while the South-American cave-dweller, Steatorns, which is said to
sally forth at night and vary its food with fruits and berries, has a toothed, Falcon-like bill: other genera have
extraordinary appendages to the wings, as in the African forms Macrodipteryx and Semeiophorus ; while in
the South-American genus Hydropsalis the tail-feathers are so enormously developed that we are lost in
wonder how the birds capture their prey. I have merely mentioned a few of the more remarkable genera of the
extensive family of which our bird forms a part 5 and, premising that it is to the birds of this form that the
old classical name of Caprimulgus, as a generic appellation, is restricted, we will now turn to the history of
this species, for it is that in which we are more particularly interested.

In the British Islands, over the whole of which it is distributed, the Nightjar is strictly a summer visitant,
arriving in the month of May, and taking up ‘ts abode in woods with open glades, fir and larch plantations
with sandy and rushy bottoms, wide upland open game-covers, low copses in the neighbourhood of
meadows, sterile heaths, and other waste lands. Highly cultivated districts, then, where the farmer and the
Rook strive to keep down ‘nsect-life, are not in unison with the habits of the bird, and consequently it is seldom
seen in such situations. Strictly nocturnal in its habits, the Nightjar lives upon insects of various genera,
but especially moths and chafers, which it captures in the air or on the ground. Its flight is buoyant in
the extreme, and all its aerial evolutions remarkably graceful. At one moment it may be seen diving round
and among the branches of the stately oak, at another hawking over the meadow, performing, in the course
of its flight, a thousand turns and dippings, similar to the evening gambols of the great noctule Bat. The
air, however, is by no means the only place in which it seeks its food; for it runs over the ground and
among the grass with the greatest facility, leaping up and capturing the moths and other insects which there
abound, and for securing which its wide gape, beset with strong vibrisse, is admirably adapted. On the
ground also it lays its two eggs; ng
remaining blind for several days, its curiously marked couplets bush receive the twilight; and Here these
little Nigbtjars are supplied with food until they are able to trip over the surface and catch insects for

in the forest-glade, on the bare earth, are they incubated. Here, after