unreclaimed part, say, of Cumballa Hill, and a brownish bird starts from under a bush at your foot and flies, with jerky strokes of its very long wings, for a distance of twenty or thirty yards, and then drops under a bush again, it is a Goatsucker. You have disturbed it in its sleep. Or after sunset, in the dusk of the evening, you may come upon it sitting in the dust, right in the middle of the road, in some unfrequented neighbourhood. It will jump up suddenly as often as you approach it, and fly before you for a little distance, then drop into the middle of the road again and squat, looking just like a large frog, or toad, dimly seen. This is how it spends the night, or rather, I should say, the times of dusk and dawn, for I believe it sleeps at midnight. At intervals it springs up and takes a circuit, performing somersaults and other antics in the air. It is catching moths or beetles. Sometimes it perches on a bough of a low tree, not across it, as any other bird would, but along it. Such is a Goatsucker in the bush. In the hand it is a weird thing, with a flat head and very large, lustrous, dark eyes, like those of the heroine in a penny dreadful. Its feet are small and its bill is a mere apology, but its head is almost split in two by the width of its gape. Its soft plumage is very beautiful, but hardly describable. It consists of earthy and ashy and reddish shades, mottled, barred, or curiously pencilled with darker tints.
This bird is called a Goatsucker from its wicked habit of milking domestic goats. In modern books of Natural History you will find this habit denied and the bird called a Nightjar, but they cannot get rid of its Latin name, Caprimulgus, with which it has been
