But there is more of interest on the willow.  Unseen till now, no fewer than three nighthawks are squatted lengthwise on its lower limbs, two on one limb and one on another.  Strange we did not see them before, but the explanation is the grosbeak was singing.  They are as motionless and apparently lifeless as if they had been mummified or petrified for a thousand years.  Their mottled back and rusty feathers, their heads drawn down and eyes almost closed, make them look like uncanny visitants from beyond the Styx.  Poe’s raven was not so ominous and strangely silent; these will not say even the one word, “Nevermore.”  They look like relics of a Saturnian reign before beauty and music and joy were known upon the earth.  If there were charred stumps of trees in the Bracken which was shown to Faust, we should expect to see nighthawks squatted on them, wholly indifferent to the lamentations of lost souls.  We go directly under the branch where one of them is sitting ten feet above and still he makes no sign.  We throw a clod, but yet there is no movement of his wings.  Not till a stick hits the limb close to where he is sitting does he stretch his long wings with their telltale white spots and fly rapidly away.  And the other two sit unmoved.  But some night we hear the whirr of the nighthawk’s wings as he drops rapidly from a great height, or we see him skimming close to the surface of the stream in search of insects in some twilight hour and then he is the embodiment of strength, agility, and swiftness.  And some day we perchance find the two dirt colored eggs on the bare ground, or the tiny young, like bits of rabbit fur, with only the earth beneath them and the sky above them, apparently as deserted and destitute as Romulus and Remus; and all this adds wonderfully to our interest in this strange bird, which is so common in the June woods.

The whip-poor-will is much like the nighthawk.  Both are of about the same size and color.  Both sit lengthwise on limbs.  Both are weird creatures that sleep by day and hunt by night.  But the nighthawk has a V-shaped patch of white on his throat; the large mouth of the whip-poor-will is fringed with bristles.  The nighthawk has a patch of white extending through his long wings; the whip-poor-will has none.  The nighthawk is not usually heard after the twilight hours; the whip-poor-will is heard much later.  The whip-poor-will calls its name aloud, sometimes startlingly close to the chamber window; the nighthawk only screams.

* * * * *

We cautiously approach a sand flat and are fortunate to see one of the sights of a lifetime.  The mud turtle is preparing to lay her eggs in the moist sand.  She digs the hole almost entirely with her hind feet, using first one and then the other, working rapidly for perhaps eight or ten minutes until the hole is about six inches in diameter and apparently about three or four inches deep.  Then she draws in her head, and drops, at intervals of two or three minutes,