Wildlife Management III

Without the manifest necessity of a paint-laden brush, the motion traced by the painter's hand would mimic that moth's fragile desperation against the glass as it seeks escape into the already painted sunset. It drops to the sill periodically the way the painter's hand would drop to the palette. Then it sputters back up erratically and zigzags to indicate the horizontal nature of sunsets. On the other side of the glass, free to the air, a nighthawk enacts the same erratic striving, up and up and down and sideways then up again and falteringly up until it drops, wings folded, suicidally earthward. It spreads its wings just above the ground for the life- saving aerialist's breathtaking swoop. Air through feathers (they call it drumming) hums like a wind harp or tissue paper on a comb. The nighthawk flies like that, erratic as a bat, because that's how moths fly, and that's what nighthawks eat and what they feed their fledglings. Nighthawks build no nests but lay their eggs on bare ground. Their camouflage is so perfect you can find them only by accident. If you are out walking and the mother flies up, pulling that clichéd broken-wing trick, and you mark the spot she rose from, you can find the eggs . If you go back after they hatch, you can look right at them and think they aren't there—just some small chunks of wood. So I'm watching this nighthawk and the moth on the glass in their painterly struggles that mirror each other as the sunset reclines, aloof. This is the only moth I've seen this rainless summer. The only nighthawk too. So I open the window and give them both what they want.