Birds and flowers and other country things :: :: University of Virginia Library

Fern-owl, Churn-owl, or Goat-sucker,
Night-jar, Dor-hawk, or whate'er
Be thy name among a dozen,—
Whip-poor-Will's and Who-are-you's cousin,
Chuck-Will's-widow's near relation,
Thou art at thy night vocation,
Thrilling the still evening air!

In the dark brown wood beyond us,
Where the night lies dusk and deep;
Where the fox his furrow maketh,
Where the tawny owl awaketh
Nightly from his day-long sleep;

There Dor-hawk is thy abiding,
Meadow green is not for thee;
While the aspen branches shiver,
'Mid the roaring of the river,
Comes thy chirring voice to me.

Bird, thy form I never looked on,
And to see it do not care;
Thou hast been, and thou art only
As a voice of forests lonely,
Heard and dwelling only there.

Bringing thoughts of dusk and shadow;
Trees huge-branched in ceaseless change;
Pallid night-moths, spectre-seeming;
All a silent land of dreaming,
Indistinct and large and strange.

Be thou thus, and thus I prize thee
More than knowing thee face to face,
Head and beak and leg and feather,
Kept from harm of touch and weather,
Underneath a fine glass-case.

I can read of thee, and find out
How thou fliest, fast or slow;
Of thee in the north and south too,
Of thy great moustachioed mouth too,
And thy Latin name also.

But, Dor-hawk, I love thee better
While thy voice unto me seems
Coming o'er the evening meadows,
From a dark brown land of shadows,
Like a pleasant voice of dreams!

This singular bird which is found in every part of the old world, as well in the cold regions of Siberia, as in the hot jungles of India, and the lion-haunted forests of Africa, has, as we have said, a large class of relations also in America: the Whip-poor-Will, the Willy-come-go, the Work-away, and the Who-are-you? being all of the same family. In Africa and among the American Indians these birds are looked upon with reverence or fear; for, by some they are supposed to be haunted by the dead, and by

others to be obedient to gloomy or evil spirits. The Dor-Hawk of our own country has been subject to slander, as his name of the goat-sucker shews. This name originated of course in districts where goats were used for milking, and furnished, no doubt an excuse for the false herd, who stole the milk and blamed the bird.

The Dor-Hawk, like the owl, is not seen in the day; and like it also, is an inhabitant of wild and gloomy scenes; heathy tracks abounding in fern; moors, and old woods. It is so regular in the time of beginning its nightly cry, that good old Gilbert White declares, it appeared to him to strike up exactly when the report of the Portsmouth evening gun was heard. He says, also, that its voice, which resembles the loud purring of a cat, occasions a singular vibration even in solid buildings; for that, as he and some of his neighbours sate in a hermitage on a steep hill-side, where they had been taking tea, a Dor-hawk alighted on the little cross at the top, and uttered his cry, making the walls of the building sensibly vibrate, to the wonder of all the company.

I can give no anecdotes of the bird from my

own experience. I know him best by his voice, heard mostly from scenes of a wild and picturesque character, in the gloom and shadow of evening, or in the deep calm of summer moonlight. I heard him first in a black, solemn-looking wood, between Houghton Tower, and Pleasington Priory in Lancashire. Since then I have become familiar with his voice in the pleasant woods of Winter-down, and Claremont, in Surrey.