Then they were all awing once more, hawking for supper. Along with the
hawking they got in a great deal of play, doing their tumbling and
cloud-coasting over the roofs just as they do above the fields.

Mounting by easy stages of half a dozen rapid strokes, catching flies by
the way, and crying _peent-peent_, the acrobat climbs until I look a mere
lump on the roof; then ceasing his whimpering _peent_, he turns on bowed
wings and falls--shoots roofward with fearful speed. The chimneys! Quick!

Quick he is. Just short of the roofs the taut wings flash a reverse, there
is a lightning swoop, a startling hollow wind-sound, and the rushing bird
is beating skyward again, hawking deliberately as before, and uttering
again his peevish nasal cry.

This single note, the only call he has besides a few squeaks, is far from
a song; farther still is the empty-barrel-bung-hole sound made by the air
in the rushing wings as the bird swoops in his fall. The night-hawk, alias
"bull-bat," does not sing. What a name bull-bat would be for a singing
bird! But a "voice" was never intended for the creature. Voice, beak,
legs, head--everything but wings and maw was sacrificed for a mouth. What
a mouth! The bird can almost swallow himself. Such a cleft in the head
could never mean a song; it could never be utilized for anything but a
fly-trap.

We have use for fly-traps. We need some birds just to sit around, look
pretty, and warble. We will pay them for it in cherries or in whatever
they ask. But there is also a great need for birds that kill insects. And
first among these are the night-hawks. They seem to have been designed for
this sole purpose. Their end is to kill insects. They are more like