itting 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 would use a rail or a log or a wall, or even the ground; but
wherever he settled himself, he looked like a blotch of light and dark,
and one could gaze right at him without noticing that a bird was there.
That was the way Mother Nomer did, too--clowns both of them and always
ready for the wonderful game of camouflage!

They had remarkable voices. There seemed to be just one word to their
call. I am not going to tell you what that word is. 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 summer for years, but I can't say it
myself. It is a very funny word, but you will have to get one of them to
speak it for you!

They came by all their different kinds of queerness naturally enough,
Mis and Mother Nomer did, for it seemed to run in the family to be
peculiar, and all their relatives had oddities of one kind or another.
Take Cousin Whip-poor-will, 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 Hummingbirds and Chimney Swifts, it would
take a story apiece as long as this to begin to tell of their strange
doings. But it is a nice, likable sort of queerness they all have; so
very interesting, too, that we enjoy them the better for it.

There is one more wonderful thing yet that Mis and his mate did--and
their twins with them; for before this happened, the children had grown
to be as big as their parents, and a bit plumper, 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 the winter. Just what performances they gave along
the way, I did not hear; but with a whole flock of flying clowns on the
wing, it seems likely that they had a gay time of it altogether!

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 2: See _Hexapod Stories_, pages 4, 110, 126.]

X

THE LOST DOVE

_One Thousand Dollars ($1000) Reward_

That is the prize that has been offered for a nesting pair of Passenger
Pigeons. No one has claime