[Contents]CHAPTER XXXSWIFTS AND NIGHT-JARS“The swift is that large black swallow that flies in flocks on summer evenings and utters a shrill cry as it passes. Hunting insects on the wing is its occupation. It has a very short beak that opens wide, a big gullet, always coated with a glue that holds the captured game, long and pointed wings which enable it to cover in continuous flight eighty leagues an hour, and piercing eyes capable of seeing a gnat at a hundred meters’ distance, or even farther. Every insect that ventures into the upper air is lost: the swift’s open beak is a living trap, a trap that advances rapidly to swallow up the tiny prey.European SwiftEuropean Swift“If the bird has little ones, it sometimes stows away its prey in its cheek-pouches and, when they are full, returns to its nest to feed these provisions to the hungry mouths waiting to be filled, discharging[232]through its beak the accumulated flies, moths, and beetles.“What a slaughter of twilight-flying insects takes place when the screaming flocks of swifts fly hither and thither, circling about in the calm glow of sunset! What an onrush of whirring wings! What dash and eagerness! How animated the scene! Some fly merely as chance dictates, letting themselves glide gently through the air for the mere pleasure of the motion; others describe intertwining circles without number; others, again, soar aloft on motionless wings or let themselves fall from dizzy heights as if wounded and helpless; still others follow a straight course, racing toward some distant goal and then returning for a fresh start; and, finally, there are those that go whirling in noisy companies about some lofty building. But what of this one that darts across our vision in such hot haste? It flashes past with three strokes of the wings and is lost in the haze of the distance. What impetuosity, children, what amazing speed!”“I have often wished I could fly when I was watching those birds,” said Emile. “If I only had their wings to carry me to those blue mountains we see from here, how I should like to go flying to the top of that highest peak and then come back as quickly as I went!”“That wish, my boy, is common to us all; every one must envy the swift its wings, but certainly no one would ever think of envying it its feet.”“Why?”[233]“Because they are so misshapen and the legs are so short that they cannot be used for walking. All four toes point forward. That tells you the swift does not perch, being unable to grasp the supporting branch, but must cling to walls for a brief rest, after which it must take flight again, starting with a falling movement as bats do. Guéneau de Montbéliard tells us this:Rock SwiftRock Swift“ ‘Swifts have to be on the wing a great part of the time. They never voluntarily alight on the ground, and if by some accident they fall to earth they cannot rise again into the air without extreme difficulty, by dragging themselves up on to a little mound or by climbing with beak and claws upon a stone from which they can spread their long wings. If the ground is quite level they either lie prone on the stomach or sway from side to side with a balancing motion, or they manage to struggle forward a little by beating the earth with their wings. After repeated efforts they sometimes succeed in flying off. The earth, therefore, is to them a great danger that must be avoided with the utmost care. Any state between swift motion and absolute rest is hardly possible with them. Violent exercise in the[234]air and perfect quiet in their place of retreat—these two, as a rule, make up their existence. The only variation known to them is to hang on to some wall near their hole and then drag themselves into the nest by clambering along with the help of beak and any chance support that they can find. Usually they enter their retreat in full flight. After passing and repassing its entrance more than a hundred times, all at once they dart in so quickly that they are lost to sight before you know whither they are gone. You feel almost inclined to believe they have vanished into thin air.’“Their nest is nearly always placed in a deep hole in the wall and at a great height. It is made of hemp threads, little wisps of tow, bits of straw, feathers, rags, and cotton-like down from poplar and willow catkins. These materials are stuck together with the viscous saliva that constantly oozes from the swift’s throat and serves as glue to entangle captured insects. The bird spreads it over the nest and thoroughly moistens the successive layers. In drying this saliva hardens and takes on the shiny appearance of gum, giving consistency and even elasticity to the whole structure. If you squeeze the nest between your two hands it will shrink up without breaking, and when the pressure is removed it will resume its former shape.“The swift, then, furnishes its own adhesive cement, but whence does it obtain the other materials it needs, such as tow, rags, straw, and feathers? Of course it is not so foolish as to go and pick them up[235]from the ground, where it might find them as other birds do; for if it touched the ground it would certainly come to grief. Therefore it resorts to cunning. As it reaches us rather late in the season, it takes advantage of such holes as it finds already abandoned by the sparrows, and there it finds abundant materials which it uses in its own way by sticking them together with its glue. If the sparrows have not yet broken up housekeeping, it boldly invades their nests, steals bits of flock and tufts of hair, straw, and feathers, a little from one and a little from another, and makes with these its own nest in another hole in the same wall. The female lays from two to four eggs, pure white and rather elongated. Swifts seldom stay more than three months with us. Arriving after the swallows early in May, they leave at the end of July.“The white-breasted swift differs from the bird I have just described in being larger and having a white breast and stomach. It is found in the region of the Alps and of the Pyrenees and frequents the Mediterranean shores, especially where the waves beat against high, steep cliffs. Middle and northern Europe are not visited by this bird. Its flight is even swifter than that of its black cousin, and it flies habitually at a great height, descending only when bad weather threatens. It builds its nest at the summit of high, steep rocks, making it of straw and moss stuck together with the glue from its own throat.“The night-jar closely resembles the swift, having, like that bird, a short beak which is very broad[236]at the base and opens very wide, while from the gullet comes a sticky saliva for holding fast any insects that are caught. Its size is about that of the thrush; its plumage is light, soft, and shaded with gray and brown; its eyes are large and prominent and very sensitive to light; the base of its beak bristles with long, stiff hairs; and its legs are short, but at the same time not ill adapted to walking.Night-jarNight-jar“As indicated by the sensitiveness of its eyes, which cannot endure the full light of day, and by the softness and lightness and gray color of its plumage, which resembles that of the hornless owl, the night-jar is a twilight bird: it is the swift of the evening, flying and hunting only when the sun is near setting. By the fading light of a summer evening it may be seen scanning the ground in low flight to and fro over its surface, after the manner of the swallow. It flies with mouth wide open, so that the air in striking the throat produces a low and continuous humming like that of a spinning-wheel.”“And is it from that humming sound that it gets its name of night-jar?” asked Jules.“Precisely. But it does not make this humming sound for the mere love of hearing it; its object is to snap up the twilight-flying insects as it passes[237]with distended beak. Big beetles sporting in the evening air, June-bugs, and other plump winged creatures disappear in the viscous gullet, while small butterflies, moths, gnats, and mosquitoes become entangled by the dozen in the fatal glue. If the game is large, the bird swallows it at once, whole and still alive; if small, it waits until it has caught a certain number and then swallows them all in one mouthful.”“But does it really swallow big beetles and June-bugs alive?” Emile asked.“You can readily understand that in its headlong chase the bird has no time to dismember its captives. Pouncing upon the insect with wide-open beak, snapping it up, and gulping it down—all this it does as it flies, without a moment’s pause. No sooner is the plumpest prey captured than down it goes, alive and struggling, into the bird’s crop.”“A dozen of that sort of game must stir up a big rumpus in the bird’s crop,” was Emile’s opinion.“Almost any other creature in the night-jar’s place would have its digestion ruined by a brisk company of coleopters kicking about in the stomach and tickling its walls with their rough and prickly legs; but I am inclined to believe the bird has the means of quieting them immediately by smothering them with its digestive juices. As it carries on the business of stuffing its crop with large live beetles, it ought to know the secret of how to prevent their making a hole in its stomach. But that does not lessen my admiration for its digestive powers. No[238]creature enjoys a more remarkable immunity from dyspepsia.“On a near view the night-jar is not a pretty bird. Its flat skull; its tremendously yawning beak, which seems to split the whole head in two; its wide-open gullet, red and slimy and powdered with the remains of moths recently devoured; its large and prominent eyes—all these give it somewhat the appearance of a toad. That is why it is sometimes called the flying toad. Another common name for it is goat-sucker, based on a false belief as to one of its habits. It likes to visit pastures and sheepfolds, where it chases the beetles to be found there. Noting its frequent appearance among the sheep and goats, shepherds imagined it came there to suck their milk. If they had watched it more closely they would have seen the absurdity of any such notion. A bird suck? What nonsense! But the more ridiculous an idea is, the more likely it is to spread, and the absurd name of goat-sucker is better known in many places than the appropriate and expressive one of night-jar.“This bird comes to us from warmer lands toward the beginning of May, and leaves us in September. It builds no nest, imitating in this various nocturnal birds of prey. Some hole in the ground or among broken stones, at the foot of a tree or a rock, and usually taken just as it happens to be, suffices to hold the bird’s eggs, which are two or three in number, white with tawny and bluish spots.“In closing let me beg you to remember what we owe these big-throated birds that hunt insects on the[239]wing, and more especially the swifts and swallows, who defend our granaries and gardens, our wardrobes and our very persons. What would you think of any one who, possessing the terrible secret of creating by the bushel moths, gnats, mosquitoes, weevils, and other destructive insects, should let loose a swarm of these creatures in the air about us?”“I should say hanging was too good for him,” answered Louis.“But that is exactly what any one does who kills a swallow. It is true he does not create moths and mosquitoes and other insects, but he saves the lives of those that the swallow would have eaten, and thus he is guilty of as grave an offense as if he had created them on purpose to turn them loose on us. He does a wicked deed, for he receives with deadly shotgun the pretty, joyous creature, messenger of spring and sunshine, that comes trustfully asking his hospitality and the permission to build its nest under the eaves of his house. He causes famine, for he encourages the multiplication of those devouring hordes that levy every year on our farm products a tax that amounts to thousands of millions of francs in its total sum and is constantly increasing as insect-eating birds decrease. A wicked deed, I say, a deed which causes famine—that is what is really done by the murderer of swallows.”[240]
[Contents]CHAPTER XXXSWIFTS AND NIGHT-JARS“The swift is that large black swallow that flies in flocks on summer evenings and utters a shrill cry as it passes. Hunting insects on the wing is its occupation. It has a very short beak that opens wide, a big gullet, always coated with a glue that holds the captured game, long and pointed wings which enable it to cover in continuous flight eighty leagues an hour, and piercing eyes capable of seeing a gnat at a hundred meters’ distance, or even farther. Every insect that ventures into the upper air is lost: the swift’s open beak is a living trap, a trap that advances rapidly to swallow up the tiny prey.European SwiftEuropean Swift“If the bird has little ones, it sometimes stows away its prey in its cheek-pouches and, when they are full, returns to its nest to feed these provisions to the hungry mouths waiting to be filled, discharging[232]through its beak the accumulated flies, moths, and beetles.“What a slaughter of twilight-flying insects takes place when the screaming flocks of swifts fly hither and thither, circling about in the calm glow of sunset! What an onrush of whirring wings! What dash and eagerness! How animated the scene! Some fly merely as chance dictates, letting themselves glide gently through the air for the mere pleasure of the motion; others describe intertwining circles without number; others, again, soar aloft on motionless wings or let themselves fall from dizzy heights as if wounded and helpless; still others follow a straight course, racing toward some distant goal and then returning for a fresh start; and, finally, there are those that go whirling in noisy companies about some lofty building. But what of this one that darts across our vision in such hot haste? It flashes past with three strokes of the wings and is lost in the haze of the distance. What impetuosity, children, what amazing speed!”“I have often wished I could fly when I was watching those birds,” said Emile. “If I only had their wings to carry me to those blue mountains we see from here, how I should like to go flying to the top of that highest peak and then come back as quickly as I went!”“That wish, my boy, is common to us all; every one must envy the swift its wings, but certainly no one would ever think of envying it its feet.”“Why?”[233]“Because they are so misshapen and the legs are so short that they cannot be used for walking. All four toes point forward. That tells you the swift does not perch, being unable to grasp the supporting branch, but must cling to walls for a brief rest, after which it must take flight again, starting with a falling movement as bats do. Guéneau de Montbéliard tells us this:Rock SwiftRock Swift“ ‘Swifts have to be on the wing a great part of the time. They never voluntarily alight on the ground, and if by some accident they fall to earth they cannot rise again into the air without extreme difficulty, by dragging themselves up on to a little mound or by climbing with beak and claws upon a stone from which they can spread their long wings. If the ground is quite level they either lie prone on the stomach or sway from side to side with a balancing motion, or they manage to struggle forward a little by beating the earth with their wings. After repeated efforts they sometimes succeed in flying off. The earth, therefore, is to them a great danger that must be avoided with the utmost care. Any state between swift motion and absolute rest is hardly possible with them. Violent exercise in the[234]air and perfect quiet in their place of retreat—these two, as a rule, make up their existence. The only variation known to them is to hang on to some wall near their hole and then drag themselves into the nest by clambering along with the help of beak and any chance support that they can find. Usually they enter their retreat in full flight. After passing and repassing its entrance more than a hundred times, all at once they dart in so quickly that they are lost to sight before you know whither they are gone. You feel almost inclined to believe they have vanished into thin air.’“Their nest is nearly always placed in a deep hole in the wall and at a great height. It is made of hemp threads, little wisps of tow, bits of straw, feathers, rags, and cotton-like down from poplar and willow catkins. These materials are stuck together with the viscous saliva that constantly oozes from the swift’s throat and serves as glue to entangle captured insects. The bird spreads it over the nest and thoroughly moistens the successive layers. In drying this saliva hardens and takes on the shiny appearance of gum, giving consistency and even elasticity to the whole structure. If you squeeze the nest between your two hands it will shrink up without breaking, and when the pressure is removed it will resume its former shape.“The swift, then, furnishes its own adhesive cement, but whence does it obtain the other materials it needs, such as tow, rags, straw, and feathers? Of course it is not so foolish as to go and pick them up[235]from the ground, where it might find them as other birds do; for if it touched the ground it would certainly come to grief. Therefore it resorts to cunning. As it reaches us rather late in the season, it takes advantage of such holes as it finds already abandoned by the sparrows, and there it finds abundant materials which it uses in its own way by sticking them together with its glue. If the sparrows have not yet broken up housekeeping, it boldly invades their nests, steals bits of flock and tufts of hair, straw, and feathers, a little from one and a little from another, and makes with these its own nest in another hole in the same wall. The female lays from two to four eggs, pure white and rather elongated. Swifts seldom stay more than three months with us. Arriving after the swallows early in May, they leave at the end of July.“The white-breasted swift differs from the bird I have just described in being larger and having a white breast and stomach. It is found in the region of the Alps and of the Pyrenees and frequents the Mediterranean shores, especially where the waves beat against high, steep cliffs. Middle and northern Europe are not visited by this bird. Its flight is even swifter than that of its black cousin, and it flies habitually at a great height, descending only when bad weather threatens. It builds its nest at the summit of high, steep rocks, making it of straw and moss stuck together with the glue from its own throat.“The night-jar closely resembles the swift, having, like that bird, a short beak which is very broad[236]at the base and opens very wide, while from the gullet comes a sticky saliva for holding fast any insects that are caught. Its size is about that of the thrush; its plumage is light, soft, and shaded with gray and brown; its eyes are large and prominent and very sensitive to light; the base of its beak bristles with long, stiff hairs; and its legs are short, but at the same time not ill adapted to walking.Night-jarNight-jar“As indicated by the sensitiveness of its eyes, which cannot endure the full light of day, and by the softness and lightness and gray color of its plumage, which resembles that of the hornless owl, the night-jar is a twilight bird: it is the swift of the evening, flying and hunting only when the sun is near setting. By the fading light of a summer evening it may be seen scanning the ground in low flight to and fro over its surface, after the manner of the swallow. It flies with mouth wide open, so that the air in striking the throat produces a low and continuous humming like that of a spinning-wheel.”“And is it from that humming sound that it gets its name of night-jar?” asked Jules.“Precisely. But it does not make this humming sound for the mere love of hearing it; its object is to snap up the twilight-flying insects as it passes[237]with distended beak. Big beetles sporting in the evening air, June-bugs, and other plump winged creatures disappear in the viscous gullet, while small butterflies, moths, gnats, and mosquitoes become entangled by the dozen in the fatal glue. If the game is large, the bird swallows it at once, whole and still alive; if small, it waits until it has caught a certain number and then swallows them all in one mouthful.”“But does it really swallow big beetles and June-bugs alive?” Emile asked.“You can readily understand that in its headlong chase the bird has no time to dismember its captives. Pouncing upon the insect with wide-open beak, snapping it up, and gulping it down—all this it does as it flies, without a moment’s pause. No sooner is the plumpest prey captured than down it goes, alive and struggling, into the bird’s crop.”“A dozen of that sort of game must stir up a big rumpus in the bird’s crop,” was Emile’s opinion.“Almost any other creature in the night-jar’s place would have its digestion ruined by a brisk company of coleopters kicking about in the stomach and tickling its walls with their rough and prickly legs; but I am inclined to believe the bird has the means of quieting them immediately by smothering them with its digestive juices. As it carries on the business of stuffing its crop with large live beetles, it ought to know the secret of how to prevent their making a hole in its stomach. But that does not lessen my admiration for its digestive powers. No[238]creature enjoys a more remarkable immunity from dyspepsia.“On a near view the night-jar is not a pretty bird. Its flat skull; its tremendously yawning beak, which seems to split the whole head in two; its wide-open gullet, red and slimy and powdered with the remains of moths recently devoured; its large and prominent eyes—all these give it somewhat the appearance of a toad. That is why it is sometimes called the flying toad. Another common name for it is goat-sucker, based on a false belief as to one of its habits. It likes to visit pastures and sheepfolds, where it chases the beetles to be found there. Noting its frequent appearance among the sheep and goats, shepherds imagined it came there to suck their milk. If they had watched it more closely they would have seen the absurdity of any such notion. A bird suck? What nonsense! But the more ridiculous an idea is, the more likely it is to spread, and the absurd name of goat-sucker is better known in many places than the appropriate and expressive one of night-jar.“This bird comes to us from warmer lands toward the beginning of May, and leaves us in September. It builds no nest, imitating in this various nocturnal birds of prey. Some hole in the ground or among broken stones, at the foot of a tree or a rock, and usually taken just as it happens to be, suffices to hold the bird’s eggs, which are two or three in number, white with tawny and bluish spots.“In closing let me beg you to remember what we owe these big-throated birds that hunt insects on the[239]wing, and more especially the swifts and swallows, who defend our granaries and gardens, our wardrobes and our very persons. What would you think of any one who, possessing the terrible secret of creating by the bushel moths, gnats, mosquitoes, weevils, and other destructive insects, should let loose a swarm of these creatures in the air about us?”“I should say hanging was too good for him,” answered Louis.“But that is exactly what any one does who kills a swallow. It is true he does not create moths and mosquitoes and other insects, but he saves the lives of those that the swallow would have eaten, and thus he is guilty of as grave an offense as if he had created them on purpose to turn them loose on us. He does a wicked deed, for he receives with deadly shotgun the pretty, joyous creature, messenger of spring and sunshine, that comes trustfully asking his hospitality and the permission to build its nest under the eaves of his house. He causes famine, for he encourages the multiplication of those devouring hordes that levy every year on our farm products a tax that amounts to thousands of millions of francs in its total sum and is constantly increasing as insect-eating birds decrease. A wicked deed, I say, a deed which causes famine—that is what is really done by the murderer of swallows.”[240]
CHAPTER XXXSWIFTS AND NIGHT-JARS
“The swift is that large black swallow that flies in flocks on summer evenings and utters a shrill cry as it passes. Hunting insects on the wing is its occupation. It has a very short beak that opens wide, a big gullet, always coated with a glue that holds the captured game, long and pointed wings which enable it to cover in continuous flight eighty leagues an hour, and piercing eyes capable of seeing a gnat at a hundred meters’ distance, or even farther. Every insect that ventures into the upper air is lost: the swift’s open beak is a living trap, a trap that advances rapidly to swallow up the tiny prey.European SwiftEuropean Swift“If the bird has little ones, it sometimes stows away its prey in its cheek-pouches and, when they are full, returns to its nest to feed these provisions to the hungry mouths waiting to be filled, discharging[232]through its beak the accumulated flies, moths, and beetles.“What a slaughter of twilight-flying insects takes place when the screaming flocks of swifts fly hither and thither, circling about in the calm glow of sunset! What an onrush of whirring wings! What dash and eagerness! How animated the scene! Some fly merely as chance dictates, letting themselves glide gently through the air for the mere pleasure of the motion; others describe intertwining circles without number; others, again, soar aloft on motionless wings or let themselves fall from dizzy heights as if wounded and helpless; still others follow a straight course, racing toward some distant goal and then returning for a fresh start; and, finally, there are those that go whirling in noisy companies about some lofty building. But what of this one that darts across our vision in such hot haste? It flashes past with three strokes of the wings and is lost in the haze of the distance. What impetuosity, children, what amazing speed!”“I have often wished I could fly when I was watching those birds,” said Emile. “If I only had their wings to carry me to those blue mountains we see from here, how I should like to go flying to the top of that highest peak and then come back as quickly as I went!”“That wish, my boy, is common to us all; every one must envy the swift its wings, but certainly no one would ever think of envying it its feet.”“Why?”[233]“Because they are so misshapen and the legs are so short that they cannot be used for walking. All four toes point forward. That tells you the swift does not perch, being unable to grasp the supporting branch, but must cling to walls for a brief rest, after which it must take flight again, starting with a falling movement as bats do. Guéneau de Montbéliard tells us this:Rock SwiftRock Swift“ ‘Swifts have to be on the wing a great part of the time. They never voluntarily alight on the ground, and if by some accident they fall to earth they cannot rise again into the air without extreme difficulty, by dragging themselves up on to a little mound or by climbing with beak and claws upon a stone from which they can spread their long wings. If the ground is quite level they either lie prone on the stomach or sway from side to side with a balancing motion, or they manage to struggle forward a little by beating the earth with their wings. After repeated efforts they sometimes succeed in flying off. The earth, therefore, is to them a great danger that must be avoided with the utmost care. Any state between swift motion and absolute rest is hardly possible with them. Violent exercise in the[234]air and perfect quiet in their place of retreat—these two, as a rule, make up their existence. The only variation known to them is to hang on to some wall near their hole and then drag themselves into the nest by clambering along with the help of beak and any chance support that they can find. Usually they enter their retreat in full flight. After passing and repassing its entrance more than a hundred times, all at once they dart in so quickly that they are lost to sight before you know whither they are gone. You feel almost inclined to believe they have vanished into thin air.’“Their nest is nearly always placed in a deep hole in the wall and at a great height. It is made of hemp threads, little wisps of tow, bits of straw, feathers, rags, and cotton-like down from poplar and willow catkins. These materials are stuck together with the viscous saliva that constantly oozes from the swift’s throat and serves as glue to entangle captured insects. The bird spreads it over the nest and thoroughly moistens the successive layers. In drying this saliva hardens and takes on the shiny appearance of gum, giving consistency and even elasticity to the whole structure. If you squeeze the nest between your two hands it will shrink up without breaking, and when the pressure is removed it will resume its former shape.“The swift, then, furnishes its own adhesive cement, but whence does it obtain the other materials it needs, such as tow, rags, straw, and feathers? Of course it is not so foolish as to go and pick them up[235]from the ground, where it might find them as other birds do; for if it touched the ground it would certainly come to grief. Therefore it resorts to cunning. As it reaches us rather late in the season, it takes advantage of such holes as it finds already abandoned by the sparrows, and there it finds abundant materials which it uses in its own way by sticking them together with its glue. If the sparrows have not yet broken up housekeeping, it boldly invades their nests, steals bits of flock and tufts of hair, straw, and feathers, a little from one and a little from another, and makes with these its own nest in another hole in the same wall. The female lays from two to four eggs, pure white and rather elongated. Swifts seldom stay more than three months with us. Arriving after the swallows early in May, they leave at the end of July.“The white-breasted swift differs from the bird I have just described in being larger and having a white breast and stomach. It is found in the region of the Alps and of the Pyrenees and frequents the Mediterranean shores, especially where the waves beat against high, steep cliffs. Middle and northern Europe are not visited by this bird. Its flight is even swifter than that of its black cousin, and it flies habitually at a great height, descending only when bad weather threatens. It builds its nest at the summit of high, steep rocks, making it of straw and moss stuck together with the glue from its own throat.“The night-jar closely resembles the swift, having, like that bird, a short beak which is very broad[236]at the base and opens very wide, while from the gullet comes a sticky saliva for holding fast any insects that are caught. Its size is about that of the thrush; its plumage is light, soft, and shaded with gray and brown; its eyes are large and prominent and very sensitive to light; the base of its beak bristles with long, stiff hairs; and its legs are short, but at the same time not ill adapted to walking.Night-jarNight-jar“As indicated by the sensitiveness of its eyes, which cannot endure the full light of day, and by the softness and lightness and gray color of its plumage, which resembles that of the hornless owl, the night-jar is a twilight bird: it is the swift of the evening, flying and hunting only when the sun is near setting. By the fading light of a summer evening it may be seen scanning the ground in low flight to and fro over its surface, after the manner of the swallow. It flies with mouth wide open, so that the air in striking the throat produces a low and continuous humming like that of a spinning-wheel.”“And is it from that humming sound that it gets its name of night-jar?” asked Jules.“Precisely. But it does not make this humming sound for the mere love of hearing it; its object is to snap up the twilight-flying insects as it passes[237]with distended beak. Big beetles sporting in the evening air, June-bugs, and other plump winged creatures disappear in the viscous gullet, while small butterflies, moths, gnats, and mosquitoes become entangled by the dozen in the fatal glue. If the game is large, the bird swallows it at once, whole and still alive; if small, it waits until it has caught a certain number and then swallows them all in one mouthful.”“But does it really swallow big beetles and June-bugs alive?” Emile asked.“You can readily understand that in its headlong chase the bird has no time to dismember its captives. Pouncing upon the insect with wide-open beak, snapping it up, and gulping it down—all this it does as it flies, without a moment’s pause. No sooner is the plumpest prey captured than down it goes, alive and struggling, into the bird’s crop.”“A dozen of that sort of game must stir up a big rumpus in the bird’s crop,” was Emile’s opinion.“Almost any other creature in the night-jar’s place would have its digestion ruined by a brisk company of coleopters kicking about in the stomach and tickling its walls with their rough and prickly legs; but I am inclined to believe the bird has the means of quieting them immediately by smothering them with its digestive juices. As it carries on the business of stuffing its crop with large live beetles, it ought to know the secret of how to prevent their making a hole in its stomach. But that does not lessen my admiration for its digestive powers. No[238]creature enjoys a more remarkable immunity from dyspepsia.“On a near view the night-jar is not a pretty bird. Its flat skull; its tremendously yawning beak, which seems to split the whole head in two; its wide-open gullet, red and slimy and powdered with the remains of moths recently devoured; its large and prominent eyes—all these give it somewhat the appearance of a toad. That is why it is sometimes called the flying toad. Another common name for it is goat-sucker, based on a false belief as to one of its habits. It likes to visit pastures and sheepfolds, where it chases the beetles to be found there. Noting its frequent appearance among the sheep and goats, shepherds imagined it came there to suck their milk. If they had watched it more closely they would have seen the absurdity of any such notion. A bird suck? What nonsense! But the more ridiculous an idea is, the more likely it is to spread, and the absurd name of goat-sucker is better known in many places than the appropriate and expressive one of night-jar.“This bird comes to us from warmer lands toward the beginning of May, and leaves us in September. It builds no nest, imitating in this various nocturnal birds of prey. Some hole in the ground or among broken stones, at the foot of a tree or a rock, and usually taken just as it happens to be, suffices to hold the bird’s eggs, which are two or three in number, white with tawny and bluish spots.“In closing let me beg you to remember what we owe these big-throated birds that hunt insects on the[239]wing, and more especially the swifts and swallows, who defend our granaries and gardens, our wardrobes and our very persons. What would you think of any one who, possessing the terrible secret of creating by the bushel moths, gnats, mosquitoes, weevils, and other destructive insects, should let loose a swarm of these creatures in the air about us?”“I should say hanging was too good for him,” answered Louis.“But that is exactly what any one does who kills a swallow. It is true he does not create moths and mosquitoes and other insects, but he saves the lives of those that the swallow would have eaten, and thus he is guilty of as grave an offense as if he had created them on purpose to turn them loose on us. He does a wicked deed, for he receives with deadly shotgun the pretty, joyous creature, messenger of spring and sunshine, that comes trustfully asking his hospitality and the permission to build its nest under the eaves of his house. He causes famine, for he encourages the multiplication of those devouring hordes that levy every year on our farm products a tax that amounts to thousands of millions of francs in its total sum and is constantly increasing as insect-eating birds decrease. A wicked deed, I say, a deed which causes famine—that is what is really done by the murderer of swallows.”[240]
“The swift is that large black swallow that flies in flocks on summer evenings and utters a shrill cry as it passes. Hunting insects on the wing is its occupation. It has a very short beak that opens wide, a big gullet, always coated with a glue that holds the captured game, long and pointed wings which enable it to cover in continuous flight eighty leagues an hour, and piercing eyes capable of seeing a gnat at a hundred meters’ distance, or even farther. Every insect that ventures into the upper air is lost: the swift’s open beak is a living trap, a trap that advances rapidly to swallow up the tiny prey.
European SwiftEuropean Swift
European Swift
“If the bird has little ones, it sometimes stows away its prey in its cheek-pouches and, when they are full, returns to its nest to feed these provisions to the hungry mouths waiting to be filled, discharging[232]through its beak the accumulated flies, moths, and beetles.
“What a slaughter of twilight-flying insects takes place when the screaming flocks of swifts fly hither and thither, circling about in the calm glow of sunset! What an onrush of whirring wings! What dash and eagerness! How animated the scene! Some fly merely as chance dictates, letting themselves glide gently through the air for the mere pleasure of the motion; others describe intertwining circles without number; others, again, soar aloft on motionless wings or let themselves fall from dizzy heights as if wounded and helpless; still others follow a straight course, racing toward some distant goal and then returning for a fresh start; and, finally, there are those that go whirling in noisy companies about some lofty building. But what of this one that darts across our vision in such hot haste? It flashes past with three strokes of the wings and is lost in the haze of the distance. What impetuosity, children, what amazing speed!”
“I have often wished I could fly when I was watching those birds,” said Emile. “If I only had their wings to carry me to those blue mountains we see from here, how I should like to go flying to the top of that highest peak and then come back as quickly as I went!”
“That wish, my boy, is common to us all; every one must envy the swift its wings, but certainly no one would ever think of envying it its feet.”
“Why?”[233]
“Because they are so misshapen and the legs are so short that they cannot be used for walking. All four toes point forward. That tells you the swift does not perch, being unable to grasp the supporting branch, but must cling to walls for a brief rest, after which it must take flight again, starting with a falling movement as bats do. Guéneau de Montbéliard tells us this:
Rock SwiftRock Swift
Rock Swift
“ ‘Swifts have to be on the wing a great part of the time. They never voluntarily alight on the ground, and if by some accident they fall to earth they cannot rise again into the air without extreme difficulty, by dragging themselves up on to a little mound or by climbing with beak and claws upon a stone from which they can spread their long wings. If the ground is quite level they either lie prone on the stomach or sway from side to side with a balancing motion, or they manage to struggle forward a little by beating the earth with their wings. After repeated efforts they sometimes succeed in flying off. The earth, therefore, is to them a great danger that must be avoided with the utmost care. Any state between swift motion and absolute rest is hardly possible with them. Violent exercise in the[234]air and perfect quiet in their place of retreat—these two, as a rule, make up their existence. The only variation known to them is to hang on to some wall near their hole and then drag themselves into the nest by clambering along with the help of beak and any chance support that they can find. Usually they enter their retreat in full flight. After passing and repassing its entrance more than a hundred times, all at once they dart in so quickly that they are lost to sight before you know whither they are gone. You feel almost inclined to believe they have vanished into thin air.’
“Their nest is nearly always placed in a deep hole in the wall and at a great height. It is made of hemp threads, little wisps of tow, bits of straw, feathers, rags, and cotton-like down from poplar and willow catkins. These materials are stuck together with the viscous saliva that constantly oozes from the swift’s throat and serves as glue to entangle captured insects. The bird spreads it over the nest and thoroughly moistens the successive layers. In drying this saliva hardens and takes on the shiny appearance of gum, giving consistency and even elasticity to the whole structure. If you squeeze the nest between your two hands it will shrink up without breaking, and when the pressure is removed it will resume its former shape.
“The swift, then, furnishes its own adhesive cement, but whence does it obtain the other materials it needs, such as tow, rags, straw, and feathers? Of course it is not so foolish as to go and pick them up[235]from the ground, where it might find them as other birds do; for if it touched the ground it would certainly come to grief. Therefore it resorts to cunning. As it reaches us rather late in the season, it takes advantage of such holes as it finds already abandoned by the sparrows, and there it finds abundant materials which it uses in its own way by sticking them together with its glue. If the sparrows have not yet broken up housekeeping, it boldly invades their nests, steals bits of flock and tufts of hair, straw, and feathers, a little from one and a little from another, and makes with these its own nest in another hole in the same wall. The female lays from two to four eggs, pure white and rather elongated. Swifts seldom stay more than three months with us. Arriving after the swallows early in May, they leave at the end of July.
“The white-breasted swift differs from the bird I have just described in being larger and having a white breast and stomach. It is found in the region of the Alps and of the Pyrenees and frequents the Mediterranean shores, especially where the waves beat against high, steep cliffs. Middle and northern Europe are not visited by this bird. Its flight is even swifter than that of its black cousin, and it flies habitually at a great height, descending only when bad weather threatens. It builds its nest at the summit of high, steep rocks, making it of straw and moss stuck together with the glue from its own throat.
“The night-jar closely resembles the swift, having, like that bird, a short beak which is very broad[236]at the base and opens very wide, while from the gullet comes a sticky saliva for holding fast any insects that are caught. Its size is about that of the thrush; its plumage is light, soft, and shaded with gray and brown; its eyes are large and prominent and very sensitive to light; the base of its beak bristles with long, stiff hairs; and its legs are short, but at the same time not ill adapted to walking.
Night-jarNight-jar
Night-jar
“As indicated by the sensitiveness of its eyes, which cannot endure the full light of day, and by the softness and lightness and gray color of its plumage, which resembles that of the hornless owl, the night-jar is a twilight bird: it is the swift of the evening, flying and hunting only when the sun is near setting. By the fading light of a summer evening it may be seen scanning the ground in low flight to and fro over its surface, after the manner of the swallow. It flies with mouth wide open, so that the air in striking the throat produces a low and continuous humming like that of a spinning-wheel.”
“And is it from that humming sound that it gets its name of night-jar?” asked Jules.
“Precisely. But it does not make this humming sound for the mere love of hearing it; its object is to snap up the twilight-flying insects as it passes[237]with distended beak. Big beetles sporting in the evening air, June-bugs, and other plump winged creatures disappear in the viscous gullet, while small butterflies, moths, gnats, and mosquitoes become entangled by the dozen in the fatal glue. If the game is large, the bird swallows it at once, whole and still alive; if small, it waits until it has caught a certain number and then swallows them all in one mouthful.”
“But does it really swallow big beetles and June-bugs alive?” Emile asked.
“You can readily understand that in its headlong chase the bird has no time to dismember its captives. Pouncing upon the insect with wide-open beak, snapping it up, and gulping it down—all this it does as it flies, without a moment’s pause. No sooner is the plumpest prey captured than down it goes, alive and struggling, into the bird’s crop.”
“A dozen of that sort of game must stir up a big rumpus in the bird’s crop,” was Emile’s opinion.
“Almost any other creature in the night-jar’s place would have its digestion ruined by a brisk company of coleopters kicking about in the stomach and tickling its walls with their rough and prickly legs; but I am inclined to believe the bird has the means of quieting them immediately by smothering them with its digestive juices. As it carries on the business of stuffing its crop with large live beetles, it ought to know the secret of how to prevent their making a hole in its stomach. But that does not lessen my admiration for its digestive powers. No[238]creature enjoys a more remarkable immunity from dyspepsia.
“On a near view the night-jar is not a pretty bird. Its flat skull; its tremendously yawning beak, which seems to split the whole head in two; its wide-open gullet, red and slimy and powdered with the remains of moths recently devoured; its large and prominent eyes—all these give it somewhat the appearance of a toad. That is why it is sometimes called the flying toad. Another common name for it is goat-sucker, based on a false belief as to one of its habits. It likes to visit pastures and sheepfolds, where it chases the beetles to be found there. Noting its frequent appearance among the sheep and goats, shepherds imagined it came there to suck their milk. If they had watched it more closely they would have seen the absurdity of any such notion. A bird suck? What nonsense! But the more ridiculous an idea is, the more likely it is to spread, and the absurd name of goat-sucker is better known in many places than the appropriate and expressive one of night-jar.
“This bird comes to us from warmer lands toward the beginning of May, and leaves us in September. It builds no nest, imitating in this various nocturnal birds of prey. Some hole in the ground or among broken stones, at the foot of a tree or a rock, and usually taken just as it happens to be, suffices to hold the bird’s eggs, which are two or three in number, white with tawny and bluish spots.
“In closing let me beg you to remember what we owe these big-throated birds that hunt insects on the[239]wing, and more especially the swifts and swallows, who defend our granaries and gardens, our wardrobes and our very persons. What would you think of any one who, possessing the terrible secret of creating by the bushel moths, gnats, mosquitoes, weevils, and other destructive insects, should let loose a swarm of these creatures in the air about us?”
“I should say hanging was too good for him,” answered Louis.
“But that is exactly what any one does who kills a swallow. It is true he does not create moths and mosquitoes and other insects, but he saves the lives of those that the swallow would have eaten, and thus he is guilty of as grave an offense as if he had created them on purpose to turn them loose on us. He does a wicked deed, for he receives with deadly shotgun the pretty, joyous creature, messenger of spring and sunshine, that comes trustfully asking his hospitality and the permission to build its nest under the eaves of his house. He causes famine, for he encourages the multiplication of those devouring hordes that levy every year on our farm products a tax that amounts to thousands of millions of francs in its total sum and is constantly increasing as insect-eating birds decrease. A wicked deed, I say, a deed which causes famine—that is what is really done by the murderer of swallows.”[240]