x 14 Bird - Lore
nothing but feed these gray wolves in feathers, who robbed him of his chance to get a fisher, lynx or sable almost before he was out of sight, And there is a side to this enmity between the hunter and the Meat-bird that is gruesome. It is years since. but some of us still recollect the tale, of an old outlaw and murderer—more than once a murderer if reports were true—who after haunting the woods for years, a terror to those who crossed his path, fell finally in his turn, the victim of a man as evil as himself He was shot by his partner and left alone to starve to death in his camp. And after three weeks of utter abandonment and despair, as he saw his end approaching, with no possibility of escaping it, he crept to the cold fireplace and got a black coal with which he scrawled a message on a shred of birch bark. And they found him later, dead and . alone. with a tin basin protecting his face, so that, as the writing said, "the ll/Ieatebirds might not pick his face after he was dead."
A dread like that, shadowing the last hours of such a man, directing his last words and last act: what a revelation it is of the character of the bird and of the inveterate enmity with which the hunter regards him!
Nighthawk Notes
BY GEORGE H. SELLECK, Exeler.N¢w Hampshire
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’ I ‘HE Nighthawk has been a mystery to me since my boyhood, when my grandmother told me of the bird that says “pork” and “beef.” Its cries, its nocturnal habits, its erratic but noiseless flight are almost weird. John Burroughs says to get acquainted with a bird you must know not only the bird, but its song and nest. Although I have seen and heard many Nighthawks, and have watched a family of them carefully for a month, have seen both the male and female sitting, and have had the young ones in my hands and pockets, much of the mystery still remains. Some birds will apparently gain confidence in a careful visitor who comes to them often, but this one does not It resembles the bark of a tree and the bare gray ground so closely in color that it is very hard to distinguish it from its surroundings. It seems to know this and will some- times allow you to touch it with a stick or your finger. It shows anger rather than fear when disturbed and must almost be pushed from its eggs. Then it makes a rattling hiss somewhat like that of a goose. and jumps at you perhaps, or it flies to the nearest stump, where it lies hissing with outspread wings. One day in {May I saw a Nighthawk alight on a pine branch, where it went to sleep. The fact that it sat lengthwise of the branch with its head
