s of Eastern
Canada where the bird goes by the name of nighthawk.

In all probability its food consists exclusively of insects, though
exceptional cases have been noted in which the young birds had evidently
been fed on seeds. The popular error which charges it with stealing the
milk of ewes and goats, from which it derives the undeserved name of
"goat-sucker," with its equivalent in several Continental languages, is
another result of the imperfect light in which it is commonly observed.
Needless to say, there is no truth whatever in the accusation, for the
nightjar would find no more pleasure in drinking milk than we should in
eating moths.

Here, then, are two night-voices of very different calibre. These are
not our only birds that break the silence on moonlight nights in June.
The common thrush often sings far into the night, and the sedge-warbler
is a persistent caroller that has often been mistaken for the
nightingale. The difference in this respect between the two subjects of
these remarks is that the nightjar is invariably silent all through the
day, whereas the nightingale sings joyously at all hours. It is only
because his splendid music is more marked in the comparative silence of
the night, with little or no competition, that his daylight concert is
often overlooked.

JULY

SWIFTS, SWALLOWS AND MARTINS

SWIFTS, SWALLOWS AND MARTINS

When the trout-fisherman sees the first martins and swallows dipping
over the sward of the water-meadows and skimming the surface of the
stream in hot pursuit of such harried water-insects as have escaped the
jaws of greedy fish, he knows that summer is coming in. The signs of
spring have been evident in the budding hedgerows for some weeks. The
rooks are cawing in the elms, the cuckoo's note has been heard in the
spinney for some time before these little visitors pass in jerky flight
up and down the valley. Then, a little later, come the swifts--the black
and screaming swifts--which, though learned folk may be right in
sundering them utterly from their smaller travelling companions from the
sunny south, will always in the popular fancy be associated with the
rest. Colonies of swifts, swallows, and martins are a dominant feature
of English village life during the warm months; and though there are
fastidious folk who take not wholly culpable exception to their little
visitors on the score of cleanliness, most of us welcome them back each
year, if only for the