g. They are as motionless and
apparently lifeless as if they had been mummified or petrified for a
thousand years. Their mottled back and rusty feathers, their heads drawn
down and eyes almost closed, make them look like uncanny visitants from
beyond the Styx. Poe's raven was not so ominous and strangely silent;
these will not say even the one word, "Nevermore." They look like relics
of a Saturnian reign before beauty and music and joy were known upon the
earth. If there were charred stumps of trees in the Bracken which was
shown to Faust, we should expect to see nighthawks squatted on them,
wholly indifferent to the lamentations of lost souls. We go directly
under the branch where one of them is sitting ten feet above and still he
makes no sign. We throw a clod, but yet there is no movement of his
wings. Not till a stick hits the limb close to where he is sitting does
he stretch his long wings with their telltale white spots and fly rapidly
away. And the other two sit unmoved. But some night we hear the whirr of
the nighthawk's wings as he drops rapidly from a great height, or we see
him skimming close to the surface of the stream in search of insects in
some twilight hour and then he is the embodiment of strength, agility,
and swiftness. And some day we perchance find the two dirt colored eggs
on the bare ground, or the tiny young, like bits of rabbit fur, with only
the earth beneath them and the sky above them, apparently as deserted and
destitute as Romulus and Remus; and all this adds wonderfully to our
interest in this strange bird, which is so common in the June woods.

The whip-poor-will is much like the nighthawk. Both are of about the same
size and color. Both sit lengthwise on limbs. Both are weird creatures
that sleep by day and hunt by night. But the nighthawk has a V-shaped
patch of white on his throat; the large mouth of the whip-poor-will is
fringed with bristles. The nighthawk has a patch of white extending
through his long wings; the whip-poor-will has none. The nighthawk is not
usually heard after the twilight hours; the whip-poor-will is heard much
later. The whip-poor-will calls its name aloud, sometimes startlingly
close to the chamber window; the nighthawk only screams.

* * * * *

We cautiously approach a sand flat and are fortunate to see one of the
sights of a lifetime. The mud turtle is preparing to lay her eggs in the
moist sand. She digs the hole almost entire