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Night-hawk; Bull-bat
Adult male--Upper parts dark blackish brown mottled with buff; wings dark brown with conspicuous white patch; breast black, feathers tipped with white or buff; throat white; belly grayish white, barred with black; tail dark brownish, barred with buff, a white band near the end of all but the two middle feathers.
Adult female--Nearly the same, the throat being buff instead of white and no white on tail. Length--10.00.
Breeding Range--Throughout the Eastern States.
There is no nest, the eggs, two in number, being laid on the bare ground in a field, on rocks, or even on the flat roof of a building either in the country or in the big cities. The eggs are olive-buff, light gray, or greenish, with numerous irregular blotches and specks or thickly marked with evenly distributed spots of darker gray, olive, and purplish. Size--1.20 x .86. See Fig. 9, Plate B.
These birds, though called Night-hawks, do a great deal of flying during the daytime, especially towards the end of summer, when they may be seen at almost any time of day flying about over the open country. They are sometime mistaken for the whip-poor-will, though the white patch on the wing and the white throat should serve to identify them. Their flight is also very different, and generally, though by no means always, they fly higher than the whip-poor-will. Late in the afternoon they may be seen flying high above the city, looking almost like large bats.
The eggs are exceedingly difficult to find, as their colouring so closely matches the ground; even when the bird is startled from the eggs and tries, as many birds do, to divert attention from the eggs to herself, by a pretended broken wing or leg, it is often only after a long and careful search that the eggs are discovered.
The nesting season in New England begins about the end of May.