A nighthawk nest

June 1.

Walking up this side-hill, I disturb a nighthawk eight or ten feet from me, which goes down the hill, half fluttering, half hopping, as far as I can see. The mottled creature like a winged toad (as Nuttall says the French of Louisiana call them). 

Without moving, I look about and see its two eggs on the bare ground, on a slight shelf of the hill, on the dead pine-needles and sand, without any cavity or nest whatever, very obvious when once you had detected them, but not easily detected from their color, a coarse gray formed of white spotted with a bluish or slaty brown or umber, - a stone granite color - , like the places it selects.

I advance and put my hand on them, and while I stoop, seeing a shadow on the ground, look up and see the bird, which had fluttered down the hill so blind and helpless, now circling low and swiftly pass over my head, showing the white spot on each wing in true nighthawk fashion. I go a dozen rods when it appears again higher in the air, with its peculiar flitting, limping kind of flight, all the while noiseless.

Suddenly descending, it dashes at me within ten feet of my head, like an imp of darkness, then sweeps away high over the pond, dashing now to this side now to that, on different tacks, as if, in pursuit of its prey, it has already forgotten its eggs on the earth. I can see how it might easily come to be regarded with superstitious awe.

H. D. Thoreau, Journal, June 1, 1853

[S]eeing a shadow on the ground, look up and see the bird . . . now circling low and swiftly pass over my head, showing the white spot on each wing in true nighthawk fashion. See June 5, 1854 ("Now, just be fore sundown, a nighthawk is circling, imp-like, with undulating, irregular flight over the sprout-land on the Cliff Hill, with an occasional squeak and showing the spots on his wings. He does not circle away from this place, and I associate him with two gray eggs somewhere on the ground beneath and a mate there sitting. ")   See also  A Book of Seasons,  by Henry Thoreau,, the Nighthawk