Life Histories of North American Cuckoos, Goatsuckers, Hummingbirds, and Their Allies (continued 6)

Yet the whippoorwill lived many long years in denser obscurity still, for, playing a part behind the scenes, so to speak, its lines were ascribed to another actor in the play; it was not recognized as a bird at all until the early part of the last century. Prior to this time the whippoorwill was supposed to be nothing more than the voice of the nighthawk, and even now in many rural districts the two birds are not clearly distinguished from each other. William Brewster (1895) says: “They are still very generally regarded by country people throughout New England as one and the same bird.”

Spring.—The whippoorwill starts northward from central Florida in the latter part of March. This northerly movement evidently represents a general migration from the southern and eastern Gulf States, and through them from points farther south. The bird arrives in the latitude of Boston, Mass., late in April or early in May, thus flying a distance of a thousand miles or more in 35 or 40 days—a migration that corresponds closely, both in time of year and in speed of travel, with that of the chimney swift. Of this journey Wilson (1831) says:

In their migrations north, and on their return, they probably stop a day or two at some of their former stages, and do not advance in one continued flight. The whip-poor-will was first heard this season [1811] on the 2d day of May, in a corner of Mr. Bartram’s woods, not far from the house, and for two or three mornings after in the same place, where I also saw it. From this time until the beginning of September, there were none of these birds to be found within at least one mile of the place; though I frequently made search for them. On the 4th of September, the whip-poor-will was again heard for two evenings successively in the same part of the woods. I also heard several of them passing, within the same week, between dusk and nine o’clock at night, it being then clear moonlight. These repeated their notes three or four times, and were heard no more. It is highly probable that they migrate during the evening and night.

F. Seymour Hersey (1923) tells of a striking instance of nocturnal migration when a multitude of whippoorwills arrived suddenly at Lakeville, Mass., in the middle of the night.

In 1901 [he says], on the evening of May 4, about eight o’clock, a single bird was heard singing. This was the first arrival noted and no others were heard that evening. At two o’clock the following morning, six hours later, I was awakened by birds singing loudly everywhere. I dressed and went out and for more than an hour the chorus continued. There were numbers of birds about the house, on the door-step and ridge-pole, others singing in the road or from the stone walls along the road side, while still others could be heard down in the pastures,—often eight or ten were singing at the same instant. I walked down the road for half a mile and the birds seemed equally as abundant on neighbors’ farms. It seems probable that the migration takes place at night as these birds had just arrived.

Courtship.—Few observers have had the good fortune to watch the sexual activities of the whippoorwill. One must be very near the birds to see, in the semidarkness, the courtship in detail, and even should we catch sight of a courting pair—a rare happening—we may get but a glimpse of their actions, because, if they flit only a little way back into the gloom, they are lost to view, fading into the shadows.

Frank Bolles (1912) tells of the following experience. He was hidden under a “narrow fringe of spirea bushes, 2½ ft. high only 3 ft. from the stone”—a stone on which a whippoorwill sang every evening. He says:

It uttered its note about twenty or thirty times when to my astonishment another whip, alighted near it, on the left (W.) end of the boulder. One or two sounds like the soft popping of corn came from the new arrival, and the first bird, which had ceased its call, faced west and began a strange, slow dance, advancing a step at a time towards its mate, raising its body to the full length of its legs at each step, thus making a sort of undulating approach. The other bird remained where it alit, but seemed to be moving its body up and down or else slowly pulsating its wings. The first bird, which I think was the male, seemed to continue its dance entirely around the female. As he passed her, indescribable purring and popping sounds were made and one of the birds flew lightly away—the ♀ I think. The male resumed his first position, and remained silent. Then he rose and circled in the air, catching an insect I thought, for he came back at once to the spot on the rock which he always covers. A moment later his mate seemed to call from below the house, near the lake, and he flew, his white feathers flashing as he spread his tail, and the strokes of his wings making a distinct and quite loud sound as he passed close above my head.

Henry K. Coale (1920) reporting the observation of his neighbor, Moritz Boehm, says:

On different occasions, while the male was calling, he saw the female going through some peculiar antics, but in the dusk could not make out just what she was doing. One evening, when he was sitting on the lower step, the birds came up and performed within ten feet of him. He kept perfectly quiet. The male called from a low branch overhead, while the female strutted on the gravel path below, with wings and tail outspread and head lowered, and sidestepped back and forth, half way around to the right, then to the left, all the time uttering a curious guttural chuckle. This performance was kept up for ten or fifteen minutes.

Bendire’s (1895) account of the whippoorwill’s courtship is the best in the literature; it has become almost a classic, and ornithologists still deplore the regrettable incident that interrupted the observation.

While on a collecting trip in Herkimer County, New York, with Dr. William L. Ralph, in June, 1893, I witnessed a most amusing performance, which one may see perhaps once in a lifetime. I happened to be in a little outbuilding, some 20 feet in the rear of the house at which we were stopping, early on the evening of the 24th, about half an hour after sundown, when I heard a peculiar, low, clucking noise outside, which was directly followed by the familiar call of “whip-poor-will.” * * * Directly alongside of the small outbuilding previously referred to, a barrel of sand and lime had been spilled, and from the numerous tracks of these birds, made by them nightly afterwards, it was evident that this spot was visited regularly, and was the trysting place of at least one pair. Looking through a small aperture, I saw one of the birds waddling about in a very excited manner over the sand-covered space, which was perhaps 2 by 3 feet square, and it was so much interested in its own performance that it did not notice me, although I made some noise trying to fight off a swarm of mosquitoes which assailed me from all sides. Its head appeared to be all mouth, and its notes were uttered so rapidly that, close as I was to the bird, they sounded like one long, continuous roll.

A few seconds after his first effort (it was the male) he was joined by his mate, and she at once commenced to respond with a peculiar, low, buzzing or grunting note, like “gaw-gaw-gaw,” undoubtedly a note of approval or endearment. This evidently cost her considerable effort; her head almost touched the ground while uttering it, her plumage was relaxed, and her whole body seemed to be in a violent tremble. The male in the meantime had sidled up to her and touched her bill with his, which made her move slightly to one side, but so slowly that he easily kept close alongside of her. These sidling movements were kept up for a minute or more each time; first one would move away, followed by the other, and then it was reversed; both were about equally bold and coy at the same time. Their entire love making looked exceedingly human, and the female acted as timid and bashful as many young maidens would when receiving the first declarations of their would-be lovers, while the lowering of her head might easily be interpreted as being done to hide her blushes. Just about the time I thought this courtship would reach its climax, a dog ran out of the house and caused both to take flight.

Nesting.—The whippoorwill lays its two eggs on dry, well-drained ground, generally near the edge of a wood of small mixed growth—oak, beech, pine—where the floor of the wood is clear of dense underbrush and where the trees are not crowded together, but spaced far enough apart to cast an uneven shade. The eggs may lie on the open floor or under a small bush—not tucked away near the stems, but out in the shadow of its branches. The bird builds no nest, although a slight depression about the eggs may result from the presence of the parent there during incubation; for concealment it relies solely on the soft colors of the fallen leaves and the flickering light of the woodland.

It is rare to find the eggs laid in a more open situation.

Lewis McI. Terrill, in a letter to Mr. Bent, gives in detail the results of remarkably close observations on the home life of a pair of whippoorwills and their brood. His observations were made near St. Lambert, Quebec, in 1933.

On May 14 Mr. Terrill came upon a pair of whippoorwills in a patch of deciduous trees, mainly young maple and birch. A week later he flushed the female “from a single egg lying on a bed of old leaves in a small glade” near the spot where he first saw the birds. “There was no depression whatever, and the egg appeared as if it had been casually dropped there.” The second egg was not laid until the 23d, indicating “that egg deposition takes place on alternate days.”

Invariably at his subsequent visits Mr. Terrill found the female incubating or brooding, but while the young birds remained in the vicinity of the nest he saw the male near it only once (June 20).

He says: “The male spent the day in a thicket over 400 yards away. I usually heard him singing from this direction in the early part of the evening; later he sang from a point nearer the nest; and finally from its immediate vicinity. I gather from this that he visited his family regularly at night.

“On May 27 the eggs were resting in a noticeable depression made by the pressure of the bird’s body. One might almost call it a nest although no extraneous nesting material whatever had been added. The female was very consistent in her behavior, usually leaving the eggs when I was 10–15 feet away and flying to a dead branch 2 feet from the ground where she uttered a few protesting chucks, which resembled a call of the catbird and to a lesser extent the chuck of the hermit thrush.

“On the occasion of the male’s visit (June 20) both birds were very worried, and their calls, especially that of the male, resembled the whip note of his song, although much subdued. He sometimes called whip-will when excited by the distress calls of the young.

“When returning to the nest the female frequently hovered before alighting, often dropping to the ground a few feet from the nest. Even at that short distance she would not attempt to walk onto the eggs, but would fly up again, hover, and then alight directly on the nest.

“The nighthawk, we may note, progresses differently. To be sure, it occasionally flies short distances when approaching the nest, but the final approach is by walking, or perhaps I should say creeping in a ‘Charlie Chaplin-like’ shuffle. The different methods of approach to the nest are, I think, indicative of the different habitats of two very similar birds. The woodland whippoorwill hops or flies to avoid obstructions, whereas the nighthawk can gain its objective without leaving the ground.

“The female whippoorwill was still incubating on June 10, but on the 11th there were two young in the nest. The incubation period for the last egg laid was, therefore, at least 19 days, and possibly nearer 20.

“The first definite movement away from the nest was noted on June 18, when the female was brooding the young 50 feet away. On the 19th and 20th she was respectively 70 and 85 feet from the nest. The female often alighted crosswise on a limb when excited, or for the purpose of facing me, but quickly assumed the lengthwise position.

“June 21–22—Female brooding young 100 feet from nest.

“June 25—One young bird flew 15 feet.

“June 26—Older chick flew 26 feet when female was flushed. Younger bird still jumped, then squatted, but when I placed it on a branch, it flew 15 feet. Both young always alighted on the ground, but perched readily. This was the last I saw of the family.”

Mr. Terrill’s report of this family of whippoorwills makes it clear that the male parent very rarely came near the nest at the times he was watching it. This accords with the experience of many observers at other nests. For example, H. E. Tuttle (1911) says: “The male Whip-poor-will I saw only once, and that was after the young were fully grown. He was very conspicuous in the dusk as he sat on a log, uttering rasping sounds in his throat and opening and shutting his tail, brilliantly marked with white at the edges. It was only a day or so after seeing the male bird that I lost sight of the young birds altogether.”

But why should we expect the male whippoorwill to come to the nest in the middle of the night—the whippoorwill’s day? There is nothing to do there at night except to keep the eggs warm, or, after they hatch, to brood the young, and his mate can do that while she sleeps on the nest. So he sleeps a little way off. But when the dark comes—when his morning breaks—when the night insects begin to fly, and food abounds, and his hungry children cry, where is the male parent then? We do not know, but we may assume, as Mr. Terrill suggests, that he joins his family and aids in feeding the young.

When a female bird is approached while she is incubating (Bendire says: “I believe the female attends to this duty almost exclusively”) the behavior varies a good deal in different individuals. In many accounts of her actions, she is reported to flop about on the ground, seemingly trying to lead the intruder away. Wilson (1831) reports that “in traversing the woods one day in the early part of June, along the brow of a rocky declivity, a whippoorwill rose from my feet, and fluttered along, sometimes prostrating herself, and beating the ground with her wings, as if just expiring.” On the other hand, H. E. Tuttle (1911) speaks of a bird, brooding young, which was “very fearless, allowing me to touch her back and making it necessary for me to shove her gently off the young when I wanted a glimpse of them.”

Arthur C. Bent, in his notes, says that late in May he “flushed a whippoorwill from near a woodland path, where it apparently had been roosting regularly as evidenced by its droppings.” A few days later, not 25 yards from the path, he “flushed the whippoorwill from the ground and saw its single egg lying on the flat, bare oak leaves.”

C. H. D. Clarke, writing to Mr. Bent from Ontario, Canada, points out how changes in the topography of a region may affect the local whippoorwills. He says: “The common denominator explaining the local distribution of this species is, I believe, to be found in its feeding and egg-laying habits. The whippoorwill feeds in the open, like the nighthawk, but unlike it, fairly near the ground. Although both birds lay their eggs on the ground, the nighthawk nests in the open, whereas the whippoorwill always nests among trees. Hence, as a breeding bird, it is found in glades and around the edges of woodlots. Many of the woodlots, however, in this vicinity are closely grazed by cattle at the present time, a condition that prevailed less commonly in the semipioneering stage of our country. The whippoorwill does not tolerate this change; it will not breed in the grazed woodlots and, as a consequence, has been reduced in numbers here. It also seems to avoid extensive areas of conifers, possibly because of the absence of hardwood litter on which to lay its eggs. The area at Frank’s Bay, in which the bird breeds very commonly, is a sand plain that was burned over about 25 years ago and has since grown up in many places to dense stands of poplar from 15 to 20 feet high. Here the whippoorwill has plenty of shelter in the dense poplar woods, an abundance of hardwood litter, and may cruise about over the treetops not far above ground.”

Eggs.—[Author’s note: The two eggs of the whippoorwill are between oval and elliptical-oval in shape and become somewhat glossy when incubated. The ground color is usually pure white, but occasionally a faint creamy tint is perceptible. The markings consist of spots or small blotches of “pale Quaker drab” or “pallid Quaker drab,” scattered over the eggs more or less irregularly; an occasional egg has large, irregular blotches of this color. Overlying these pale gray markings, or scattered among them, are often many small spots or fine dots of various browns, such as “cinnamon-brown,” “tawny,” or “tawny-olive.” An occasional egg is almost immaculate.

The measurements of 50 eggs average 29.0 by 21.3 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 31.5 by 21.0, 30.48 by 22.86, 20.48 by 21.34, and 28.45 by 20.07 millimeters.]

Young.—The little whippoorwill chick, hatching out from an invisible egg, finds itself lying on the ground, with dead leaves all about. The dead leaves look like the chick, and the chick looks like the dead leaves; no one can tell them apart; practically the chick is a dead leaf, and, although hatched, it is still invisible, just as it was when hidden in the egg.

Some birds depend on speed for safety, or on agility or strength, but the whippoorwill relies chiefly on not being seen. Safety comes to the whippoorwill in dim light, half shadows, and the faint, confusing obscurity of dusk, and among these, on the borderland of invisibility, the whippoorwill lives all its days.

Nests of the whippoorwill are found almost always by accident. The old bird starts up from near the observer’s feet, and a search—sometimes a long one—reveals the eggs or the young birds. For example, A. Dawes DuBois (1911) says:

The first nest was found on May 16, 1908, in a strip of woods of medium size trees, thickly undergrown, on a high bank of the Sangamon River [Illinois]. The ground was well carpeted with dried oak leaves. Our first intimation of Whippoorwills in this place was the sudden appearance of an adult bird fluttering along the ground in front of us, apparently with a broken wing. We stopped at once and while my companion stood to mark the place, I followed the bird a short distance. She fluttered along noiselessly, feigning serious injury and leading me away from the nest as rapidly as I could be induced to follow.

A search revealed the nest within a pace of the spot we had marked. It contained one egg and the broken shell of another which gave evidence of having hatched. Although I stooped to examine the broken shell I did not see the bird that had hatched from it until my companion called my attention to it. The little fellow was crouched, motionless, upon the brown leaves not six inches from the broken egg-shell.

H. E. Tuttle (1911) speaks thus of the young birds: “The newly hatched birds were very attractive-looking little chicks so long as they kept their mouths shut. They were a uniform buff color, which matched well with the leaves, and the instant their mother left them they each ran in opposite directions and squatted. In this maneuver the old bird seemed to aid them materially by the vigorous flip which she gave them as she rose, often tumbling them over on their backs.”

J. G. Suthard writes to Mr. Bent from Muskegon, Mich., as follows: “On June 14, 1936, I flushed a whippoorwill from an oak-leafed spot on a steep hillside overlooking a large timbered swamp. I shortly discovered two downy young with their eyes only partly opened. They made no effort to escape and were silent when handled. The parent flew around several times, uttering a whup-whup-whur note, and then perched on a dead limb of a nearby tree. One of the eggshells was about 6 feet below the nest on the hillside, and the feces of the young had not been moved by the parents. As this nest was only about 30 yards from the main highway, I returned several times between this date and June 24 to see if, owing to my disturbance of the young, the parents would move them. Each time I visited the nest the parent was brooding the young in practically the same spot.”

Lewis McI. Terrill, in his study of nest life, quoted under “Nesting,” says that on June 12, before the young birds were two days old, “whenever the female was flushed, the nestlings hopped or jumped several inches with the suddenness and unexpected agility of ‘jumping beans,’ then squatted in hiding posture in the manner of woodcock chicks. The entire movement was so rapid that it almost escaped notice.” He continues:

“From the 13th to the 16th the female was brooding the young either in the nest or in the shade 2 or 3 feet away. On the latter date I heard one of the nestlings give a weak, complaining whip, which was answered by the mother 20 feet away. It attempted to follow her, progressing by little hops, but was in difficulty when it encountered heavy undergrowth where it was unable to hop. The smaller of the nestlings remained in the nest.

“June 26—The older bird when placed lengthwise on a limb quickly turned about and perched crosswise, demonstrating youth’s objection to slavish custom! The older bird now frequently used the whip note, which appears to be the chief motif in the whippoorwill vocabulary. The younger bird still called in wheezy tones that I readily imitated by sucking my finger—so well that the mother bird frequently responded by flying to me and fluttering at my feet. The young at this date, nearly 16 days old, closely resembled their parents.”

Terrill definitely established the incubation period of one of the eggs in the nest he observed as not less than 19 days, “and possibly nearer 20.” Burns (1915) gives the incubation period as 17 days, and Audubon (1840) gives it as 14 days.

Plumages.—[Author’s note: The downy young whippoorwill is thickly covered with long, soft, silky down, shading in color from “cinnamon” on the back to “pinkish cinnamon” on the chest, and to “light pinkish cinnamon” on the crown and abdomen; it matches the dead leaves on which it is hatched.

The juvenal plumage begins to grow at an early age. Ridgway (1914) says that the young male is “similar to the adult male in ‘pattern’ and coloration of lateral rectrices, as well as of primaries and primary coverts, but rest of plumage quite different, the wing-coverts and scapulars deep brownish buff or clay color, the former with coarse and irregular small spots of black, the latter with very large irregular spots of black, the under parts barred with dusky on a brownish buffy ground and, like most of the upper parts, without fine vermiculations, the pileum spotted instead of streaked with black, and the band across lower throat indistinct, more or less broken by dusky barring, and buffy instead of white.” The young female, he says, is “similar to the young male, but three lateral rectrices broadly tipped with ochraceous-buffy instead of having a large white distal area.”

A young bird in juvenal plumage, nearly grown, collected in Massachusetts in July, is like the young male described above, except that the feathers of the interscapular region and the median wing coverts are from “ochraceous-buff” to “light ochraceous-bluff,” with a narrow shaft streak and a conspicuous subterminal small spot of black.

During July and August the juvenal contour plumage is shed, the juvenal wings and tail being retained, and a first winter plumage is acquired, in which the contour plumage closely resembles that of the adult. This is worn until the following summer, when a complete molt produces the fully adult plumage. Both young and old birds have a complete annual molt between July and September.]

Food.—The earliest report on the food of the whippoorwill is that of Wilson (1831), who was the first writer to show that the whippoorwill and the nighthawk are different birds. He says: “Their food appears to be large moths, grasshoppers, pismires, and such insects as frequent the bark of old rotten and decaying timber. They are also expert in darting after winged insects.”

Knight (1908) puts the following items on the whippoorwill’s bill of fare: “Their diet,” he says, “would seem to be entirely insectivorous and among the various things I have known them to eat are Sphinx moths of various species, Actias luna, Samia cecropia, Samia columbia, Telea polyphemus, and a great variety of species of Noctuidae, also grasshoppers, crickets, mosquitoes, caddis flies, and in fact almost any sort of insect available.”

Bendire (1895) reports that “in the Western States, which are sometimes overrun by swarms of Rocky Mountain Locusts, it also feeds largely on these when abundant.”

Forbush (1927) tells of the whippoorwill the following story which will endear the bird to all mosquito-haters. He says: “While I slept unsheltered nightly for a week in the Concord woods, rolled in my blanket, with only a head-net hung to a branch overhead to protect me from mosquitoes, I noticed each morning upon awaking just before daylight that something fluttered softly about my head. The sound was like that produced by a large night-moth, but soon I heard something strike the ground a few feet away, and then a well-known cluck convinced me that my visitor was a Whip-poor-will. The bird came nightly while I remained in the woods, and each morning before daylight it flew around my head-net until it had caught all the mosquitoes there.”

Eaton (1914) says: “I have taken 36 full-grown moths from the stomach of a single Whippoorwill which was killed early in the evening, indicating that within an hour and a half he had killed and devoured these full-grown moths, each one of which contained hundreds of eggs.”

Whippoorwills secure a large part of their food by capturing night-flying insects on the wing, but Ernest Ingersoll (1920) states that they also “have a way of balancing themselves near a tree-trunk or barn-wall, picking ants and other small provender off the bark; and even hunt for worms and beetles on the ground, turning over the leaves to root them out.”

Francis H. Allen (MS.) says: “One evening I saw one take off from the branch of an oak for what was probably its first feeding flight of the night. It opened its mouth wide before launching into the air.”

Behavior.—In order to study the whippoorwill at short range it is well to visit its haunts for a few evenings and learn how the bird we are to watch behaves when it wakes from its day’s sleep. Whippoorwills move about over a considerable territory when they come into the open for their daily session of singing and feeding, they follow a route, evening after evening, that varies little, and on the circuit there are stations—a stone wall, a low branch, or a certain spot on the ground—where they are almost sure to stop and sing for a while.

If we seat ourselves near one of these stations where the light, which will be almost gone when the bird arrives, will favor our view, and where a dark background will obscure us from the bird, we shall be able to see the whippoorwill at short range, for if we sit motionless (no easy task, for mosquitoes will torture us) the bird will pay little attention to us. We must sit quiet and wait, following the song as it swings around the circuit, and we must watch the spot where the bird is about to alight, for, although in flight it looms big even in the dusk, when it comes to rest, with a flip of wings it becomes a bit of dead wood, a clod of earth, or vanishes altogether.

On several evenings late in May 1914, at Wilton, N. H., I visited what appeared to be the whippoorwill headquarters—a dry wood of small deciduous growth bordering a sloping field, on one of which was a moist alder run that ran down to the edge of the wood. When I arrived, between sunset and dark, wood thrushes and veeries were singing, but before they quieted down for the night, the whippoorwills (from one bird to two or three) began to sing, always from the dry wood. They sang intermittently, and generally after each series of whip-poor-wills their voices came from a different part of the wood. By the time the light was becoming uncertain (when one would have difficulty in reading print) one bird, leaving the wood, worked up the slope, passing the field either by way of the alder run or by a wood of larger growth and an apple orchard that bordered the higher sides of the field.

On each of the first evenings when I visited the ground, one bird paused in the corner of the field where it joined the alder run, and sang a few times, and on two of these evenings I was able to approach the bird but not near enough to see it. The next evening, therefore, as soon as the bird that was singing in the wood began to change his position, I retired to this corner of the field to await him and sat down on a bank where my figure would not show against the sky. That evening was unusually dark and cloudy. The bird left the wood by the lower side, and at 7:50 I heard the song coming nearer and nearer through the alders behind me. Then, two minutes later, it came with startling suddenness from almost at my side. The bird sat on the bare ground at the foot of the bank not 6 yards from where I sat. In bringing my glass to bear upon him, I disturbed him, I think, for he flew silently away. He alighted, however, on a rock and began to sing. He was now 12 yards from me and on a level with my eyes. His side was toward me, and he faced nearly in the direction from which he had just flown. He sat flat on the stone with his head thrown slightly backward and upward and, on alighting, immediately began to sing.

The song at close range sounded like cuck-rhip-oor-ree, the final note accented and held longer than the other three, although the rhip was louder and longer than the oor. The song was remarkably regular; twice, however, the bird increased the tempo, and once he doubled one note—either the rhip or the oor. After a pause the cuck was invariably the first note given when he continued his song.

Even in the dim light the band of white across the throat was clearly visible, and twice during each repetition of the cuck-rhip-oor-ree this band was drawn backward—slightly at the cuck, markedly during the final ree, when, I think, the beak was open wide. Later, when the bird more nearly faced me, these movements of the white band were less noticeable. The bird sat on the rock for three or four minutes, singing almost continuously. He sat absolutely still for the most part, but twice he moved backward about an inch, as if each time he took a single backward step. His departure, with no apparent cause, was noiseless and abrupt, breaking the song at oor.

F. Seymour Hersey (1923), who watched with great care a whippoorwill making its nightly round, says: “The time taken to make this circuit varied from 25 to 30 minutes. I watched this bird from several places of concealment and ascertained to my satisfaction that it was the same individual that visited each of these places and that the order given above was not varied. The spot from which he sang was, in all cases, nearly the same, i. e., within a very few feet of the place where he was seen on a previous evening.”

Frank Bolles (1912) gives a remarkable picture, seen from almost within arm’s reach, of a singing whippoorwill. Mr. Bolles, who was hidden near a stone to which the whippoorwill came nightly, says:

Suddenly I hear a rather feeble whip, 12 times S. of me, then silence and then a bird flies to the stone in front of my face, coming low over the bushes and alighting with its tall towards me. It squeaks or clicks three times, and I fear it suspects me and is giving a slight alarm note, but the next moment it begins the piercing quip o’rip slightly raising its head and dipping its tail each time it makes the sound. The head rises on the quip and falls on the rip. The wings do not move, nor the body save by a slight tipping. I could see the bird’s outline perfectly against the white background of the shingled barn on which the moonlight fell fully.

When the whippoorwill comes out in the dusk for its evening round, alighting on a stone wall, on the ground, or on a big horizontal branch high in a tall tree, we may sometimes catch sight of it against the sky, as it flies from one station to another. In the air the whippoorwill does not resemble the nighthawk at all. Its wings are broad and, compared to those of the nighthawk, short, and it moves them with an easy sweep, with none of the nighthawk’s jerkiness. When we see it flying steadily across an open field, it suggests an owl moving through the gloom on its broad, silent wings.

Taverner and Swales (1907) give a remarkable description of the flight of a whippoorwill seen under such circumstances at Point Pelee, Ontario. They say:

One evening, just as the dusk was darkening into night, a Whip-poor-will was heard near the camp. We stole out, and the bird was located in a large bare walnut tree in the open bush where, looking up against the still faintly illuminated sky, it could be plainly made out, sitting lengthwise, as is their fashion, on a rather large and almost horizontal branch. It remained perfectly motionless except for an occasional jerk of its white blotched tail, when it gave vent intermittently to a guttural “gluck.” These notes were repeated at irregular intervals of perhaps half a minute, several times and then, without start or warning, it launched away into the air, starting off immediately at full speed, with a drop that carried it in a large, even circle half way to the ground, and then up on the same curve, to vanish in the gloom of the trees. Then it appeared on the other side, swinging down on fixed wings in great elliptical curves as though whirled from the end of a cord, perfectly silent in flight and threading the dusky mazes of the tree tops with the utmost confidence and precision. Here and there it rapidly wheeled, without an apparent stroke of the wing, now coming into view in the lower arc of its great circling, and then vanishing silently again on the upward sweep on the other side. As suddenly as it started, it ceased in the middle of a swing and, while the eyes vainly searched for the dark object along the continuation of its course, it was seated again on the branch from which it first sprang, silent and still. This was repeated several times, and then it was joined by another, and the two circled about like great soft, gliding bats until the sky above grew so dark that their movements could no longer be watched.

Several writers mention the fearlessness of the whippoorwill, or perhaps its failure to recognize man as a danger. For example, Bendire (1895) quotes E. A. McIlhenny, who says: “These birds are very tame, for on two occasions, while sitting still in the twilight to observe the movements of some Owls, I have had them come so close that I could have caught them. On one occasion one lit on my knee, and another on my foot as it was extended before me.” And H. E. Tuttle (1911) says: “Once I watched two males fighting and singing at intervals on a fallen birch sapling. I was quite close to them,—within a yard—but they did not seem to regard me as dangerous, and when I tried to imitate the guttural noises they were making, they circled round my head so closely that one touched me with his wings. In the darkness I was probably no more than a charred stump.”

C. W. G. Eifrig (1919) mentions “a unique experience” with a whippoorwill, which, displaying unexpected aggressiveness, darted repeatedly at his head.

It has been surmised that the whippoorwill uses its capacious mouth to carry its eggs, and even its young, out of danger when its nest has been discovered. There is no satisfactory evidence that the bird employs its mouth in this way, but it has been seen, on two occasions at least, carrying a young bird through the air held between its legs. J. H. Bowles (1895) says: “I flushed a whippoorwill that rose with a baby bird clutched firmly between her thighs,” and Bendire (1895) quotes H. W. Flint as follows: “I once, and once only, saw a female (the male is never present at the nest) carry a young bird about a rod, but can not say she used her bill, and don’t think she did, but I am almost sure the claws and legs only were used, as the young was hugged close to the body.”

The whippoorwill is fond of taking dust baths. When driving after dark we sometimes catch sight of one as it starts up from its bath on a country road, and, as it flies off and our headlights pick it up, the white tail feathers, if the bird is a male, shine out for an instant. Forbush (1927) says: “Mr. Stanley H. Bromley of Southbridge, Massachusetts, tells me that a farmer there placed a large tray of dry wood ashes on the ground, and whippoorwills came there at night to dust in it.”

Wilson (1831) states: “The inner edge of the middle claw is pectinated, and, from the circumstances of its being frequently found with small portions of down adhering to the teeth, is probably employed as a comb to rid the plumage of its head of vermin.”

Voice.—If the whippoorwill “should sing by day, when every goose is cackling,” the song might lose some of its witchery; we do not know; the bird sings in the dark, or when darkness is coming on fast, and the singer is invisible or almost invisible among the shadows. The song at a little distance comes to the ear as a penetrating whisper of the bird’s name, repeated perfectly regularly, time after time with scarcely a pause between, at a rather rapid rate—about once a second. The fourth note, a cluck before the whip-poor-will, is heard usually only when the bird is fairly near us, although we may hear it at a distance of 200 yards under favorable circumstances. The syllable will carries farthest of all the syllables.

It is rare to hear any material variation in the song, but there are individual birds that regularly sing an unusual form, and sometimes a bird will introduce occasionally one abnormal phrase into his singing.

Simeon Pease Cheney (1891), speaking from the point of view of music, says: “In the courageous repetition of his name he accents the first and last syllables, the last most; always measuring his song with the same rhythm, while very considerably varying the melody—which latter fact is discovered only by most careful attention. Plain, simple, and stereotyped as his song appears, marked variations are introduced in the course of it. The whippoorwill uses nearly all the intervals in the natural scale, even the octave. I have never detected a chromatic tone.” Describing altercations between two or more birds, he says:

These altercations are sometimes very amusing. Three whippoorwills, two males and a female, indulged in them for several evenings one season, in my garden. They came just at dark, and very soon a spirited contest began. Frequently they flew directly upward, one at a time. Occasionally one flew down into the patch near me, put out his wings, opened his big mouth, and hissed like a goose disturbed in the dark. But, the most peculiar, the astonishing feature of the contention was the finale. Toward the close of the trial of speed and power, the unwieldy name was dropped, and they rattled on freely with the same rhythm that the name would have required, alternating in their rushing triplets, going faster and faster, louder and louder, to the end.

The bird is remarkable on account of the regularity of its song and the great number of times it repeats the whip-poor-will without a pause. From 50 to 100 repetitions are not uncommon. Forbush (1927) says: “John Burroughs, however, made a count which so far as I know exceeds all others. He records that he heard a bird ‘lay upon the back of poor will’ 1088 blows with only a rarely perceptible pause here and there, as if to take breath.”

F. Seymour Hersey (1923) writes: “The Whip-poor-will sings most continuously from dusk till about 9.30 p. m. and from 2.00 a. m. till dawn. During the intervening hours only an occasional song is heard. The song season lasts from their arrival in spring until late July or early August. Then there is a marked falling off in the number of singing birds heard until toward the end of August or early in September an increase in the number of singers is again noted. The songs of these late birds often lack the energy that characterizes the spring performance but a good many continue to sing until they leave for the south. My latest singing bird was noted September 24, 1901.” These dates refer to eastern Massachusetts.

Of the possibility of the female singing, he says: “June 15 a Whip-poor-will alighted on the fence and uttered its ‘chuck’ note, which usually precedes the regular song, repeating it a number of times but not giving a note of the usual ‘Whip-poor-will’ call. It also did the same while on the wing. This bird was supposed to be a female as no conspicuous light area was visible on the tail. If so, she was capable of singing the same as the male for I later heard and saw her sing, both from the fence and while on the ground in the middle of the road. She finally flew and was followed by another bird which may have been her mate.”

Of the whippoorwill’s minor notes, we have seen above that the growling gr-gr-gr or gaw-gaw-gaw is presumably associated with courtship. I have never heard the note except when two (or more) birds were together, on or near the ground. This note suggests a little a note of the female woodcock, which is used under similar circumstances. The whirring whup-whup-whirr is evidently an alarm note.

A. Dawes DuBois (1911) mentions two other notes, evidently of alarm. He says: “She fluttered from the spot as she had done the previous day, but this time uttering a very low hissing or ‘soughing’ sound,” and again, “She kept vigilant watch, however, at a short distance, moving about near the ground with a remarkably noiseless flight but uttering a ‘chip’ or ‘whit’ similar to that of a domestic chick.”

If we are outdoors at the end of the day, when the sun has gone down and all the ways are darkened, if we are walking along a quiet country road fringed by woods and open fields, or, in a canoe, are drifting down a stream flowing slowly past farmland—pastures, stone walls, orchards—and if we listen, what do we hear? If it is summer, the bird songs are gradually fading away as the birds fall asleep, the robin chorus lessens when the light grows dim, and when it is almost dark a field sparrow may sing for the last time before night comes. If it is autumn we hear little bird song, only a short period of chipping and clucking before the birds settle for the night, and after that only the insects that will sing the night through. But let us listen. Was that a whippoorwill? Do we hear a whippoorwill, or do we imagine we hear one because the scene has changed to a world of shadows—the whippoorwill’s world—and association has brought the bird to our mind, and its song has come to our ears? The song is faint and comes from far away. Perhaps we did not hear it; perhaps there was no song to hear.

This is a peculiarity of the whippoorwill’s song; it is so bound up with association that we are sometimes misled. It is the same with the bluebird when we listen for its song over the brown fields of March.

Field marks.—The whippoorwill and the nighthawk appear very much alike when sitting either on the ground or along a horizontal branch of a tree, for in such situations it is difficult to see the points where the two birds differ. The whippoorwill is bristly about the mouth; the nighthawk is not. The tips of the whippoorwill’s folded wings do not come to the end of the rounded tail, whereas the nighthawk’s wings project beyond the forked tail. The whippoorwill has a narrow line of white on the upper breast. The corresponding mark on the nighthawk is broader and includes the throat. Perhaps the best mark for diagnosis is the pale, barred sides of the nighthawk. For purposes of field identification this part of the whippoorwill may be said to be unbarred.

In the air the distinguishing mark of the nighthawk is a conspicuous spot of white in the wing. The whippoorwill lacks this mark. The flight of the two birds (see above) is very different and identifies them at a glance.

The chuck-will’s-widow, although similar to the whippoorwill in plumage, is a much larger bird.

Enemies.—The clearing away of a large part of the North American wilderness during the past two centuries or so has not materially affected the whippoorwill; it drove the bird back from the settlements a little way, farther and farther as the towns grew in extent and became the great cities of today, but at the present time, not far beyond the city limits, whippoorwills find miles and miles of country wild and secluded enough for their breeding purposes. Fifteen miles from the city of Boston, Mass., for example, as well as within a mile or two of many small towns in the State, the bird is still abundant, nesting on the dry wooded ridges and eskers.

This ability to flourish as man advanced into the country, when so many birds failed to hold their own, may be accounted for by the habits and equipment of the whippoorwill, which, when it moves about, is “bescreened in night” and is so obscurely colored that we may say “the mask of night is on its face” even in the daytime, as it lies motionless on a carpet of dead leaves.

If the bird should be discovered and attacked, we may imagine how often the whippoorwill, with its marvelous powers of flight, may escape hawk, owl, or fox.

Fall.—We rarely see whippoorwills in autumn, but as we hear them sing not infrequently at this season we know that they sometimes linger in New England almost to the end of September, a time when hard frosts are at hand, which will either kill the insects or hasten them into retirement.

Taverner and Swales (1907) report an unusual gathering of whippoorwills on Point Pelee, Ontario. They say: “In our various September visits we have usually found them more or less common, but at that season they are much quieter, and seldom do more than call a few times in the early evening and then cease. Sometimes one will be heard again through the night, but more often not. September, 1905, beginning the 4th, we saw from one to six until the 13th, when a great flight of them appeared on the Point. That day, in the red cedar thickets near the extremity of the Point, we flushed thirty between twelve and half-past one in the afternoon.”

Winter.—George Nelson, who has known the whippoorwill for years in its winter quarters on the east coast of Florida, tells me that the bird is pretty evenly distributed in the country about Sebastian, frequenting chiefly the ridges and hammocks where, during the day, it rests on the ground or on the trunk of a fallen tree. Not infrequently, as Mr. Nelson has been driving after dark along U. S. Route 1, a bird has started up from almost beneath the wheels of his car and has flown off in the glare of the headlights. He says that the bird is not in song during winter, but just before it starts northward, late in March, it sings for a few evenings, and that its departure invariably coincides with the arrival of the chuck-will’s-widow.

Each evening during my stay at Sebastian with Mr. Nelson in mid-February 1931, just as it was beginning to grow dark, a whippoorwill appeared in the dooryard, a clearing in a dense hammock on the shore of the Indian River. The bird perched lengthwise here and there on the thick limbs of a live oak, well up in the big tree, but clearly visible from the ground, and made frequent sallies out into the air, sometimes sweeping clear away from the tree, sometimes only flitting among its branches, returning either to the perch from which it had flown, or to another one. Presumably these sallies were made in pursuit of flying insects—there was a businesslike air in the bird’s behavior—but there was no sound of any snapping of the beak audible to me as I stood near the foot of the tree. Our first intimation that the bird had arrived from its day’s seclusion was the sound of a low chuck repeated at short intervals. The bird gave this note from its perch and from the air; it was very similar to the introductory note in the whippoorwill song, but a little sharper. As the bird flew about, it sailed a good deal, wheeling around with some tilting from one side to the other, the wings held out straight and flat from the body with no, or very little, bend at the wrist joint. I was strangely reminded of the flight of a shearwater—the whippoorwill seeming to avoid the branches as the shearwater avoids the tops of the waves, tilting over them as it sails.

This was when the bird was moving slowly, but at times it increased its speed and executed the most intricate maneuvers, appearing and disappearing among the branches, ever changing its direction, either sailing or flapping its wings, swerving sharply from side to side, heeling over till one wing pointed nearly to the zenith and the other to the earth, then snapping back to an even keel. It shot straight upward, dived head downward, and doubled back, twisting and gyrating with such rapidity that it seemed to be tumbling about in the air. The turns were so quick and the pace so reckless that the bird appeared in a frenzy and in danger of dashing itself against a limb of the tree, yet from the midst of these complicated evolutions it instantly righted itself and, with a flash of wings, settled flat and motionless on its perch.

Although there was the appearance of a lack of caution in these mad dashes among the network of branches, we were convinced, as we watched, that the bird governed its movements with perfect precision, with the acme of coordination.

The flight seemed silent; even when the bird passed within a few feet of my head, I heard no sound. It appeared to be alone, and after remaining for ten minutes or so, it flew off, and we heard or saw no more of it until the next evening.

When we flashed a light on it, the eye gleamed back a bright orange.

Mr. Nelson said that earlier in the winter the behavior of the bird had been different. It came about the house every evening for a while, visiting a small tree (Assonia) to which insects were attracted by big clusters of open flowers. This tree was about 10 feet tall, with large leaves but plenty of open space between the branches. The bird went to the ground after each flight into the tree, and it appeared to Mr. Nelson that the insects, as they flew among the flowers, could best be seen against the sky from this point. The bird did not return to this tree after the flowers had faded.

During a second visit to Florida, more than a month later, I saw, presumably, the same bird again. It acted exactly as it had before, perching, indeed, on the identical spot on the limb of the live oak that had been a favorite perch in February. On this occasion also only one bird visited the tree, and while feeding was silent except for the low chuck. On March 24, after the bird had been to the tree and had gone away, I heard him singing off in the hammock. This singing on his winter quarters indicated that he felt spring was here, and it was time to leave for his summer home in the north.

DISTRIBUTION

Range.—United States and southern Canada east of the Rocky Mountains, south in winter to El Salvador.

Breeding range.—The breeding range of the eastern whippoorwill extends north rarely to central Saskatchewan (Prince Albert); southern Manitoba (Gypsumville, Lake St. Martin, Shoal Lake, and Winnipeg); northern Michigan (McMillan and Sault Ste. Marie); southern Ontario (Sudbury, Algonquin Park, and Ottawa); southern Quebec (Montreal and Sherbrooke); rarely northern Maine (Presque Isle); and rarely southern New Brunswick (Scotch Lake). The eastern limits extend southward from this point along the Atlantic coast to eastern Virginia (Ashland and Lawrenceville); hence southwest through the interior to North Carolina (Raleigh and Highrock); and Georgia (Young Harris and Atlanta). South to northern Georgia (Atlanta); northern Alabama (Lookout Mountain and Sand Mountain); central Arkansas (Clinto and Big Piney Creek); and Texas (Troup). West to eastern Texas (Troup); northwestern Arkansas (Rogers and Pearidge); eastern Kansas (Ottawa and Topeka); eastern Nebraska (Peru, Omaha, and Neligh); southeastern South Dakota (Vermillion); Minnesota (St. Cloud, Fosston, and Williams); southwestern Manitoba (Treesbank); and rarely central Saskatchewan (Prince Albert).

Closely related subspecies, Stephens’s whippoorwill (A. v. arizonae), is found chiefly in Mexico, but in summer it has been recorded north to Arizona (Bradshaw Mountains, Sierra Ancha, Mount Graham, and the Chiricahua Mountains); New Mexico (Turkey Creek, Blank Range, and Fort Bayard); and southwestern Texas (Chisos Mountains).

Winter range.—The winter range of the entire species is north to southern Sonora (Alamos); southern Texas (San Patricio and Port Arthur); rarely Louisiana (Baton Rouge); southern Alabama (Fairhope); northwestern Florida (Pensacola and St. Marks); and east-central South Carolina (Mount Pleasant). East to east-central South Carolina (Mount Pleasant); Georgia (Savannah); eastern Florida (Amelia Island, Orlando, Lake Worth, and Royal Palm Hammock); British Honduras (Toledo District); and Costa Rica (probably San Jose). South to Costa Rica (probably San Jose and Puntarenas); El Salvador (Rio San Miguel, Puerto del Triunfo, and La Libertad); Oaxaca (Tehuantepec); and southern Jalisco (Colima Volcano). West to Jalisco (Colima Volcano and Bolanos Volcano); probably western Durango (Salto); and southern Sonora (Alamos).

Spring migration.—Early dates of spring arrival are: North Carolina—Louisburg, March 19; Weaverville, March 23; Raleigh, March 28. Virginia—Variety Mills, March 29; Lawrenceville, March 30. District of Columbia—Washington, April 1. Maryland—Mardela Springs, March 29; Cambridge, April 12. Pennsylvania—Williamsport, April 21; Berwyn, April 22; Philadelphia, April 22. New Jersey—Vineland, April 11; Morristown, April 23. New York—Jay, April 14; Geneva, April 25; Rochester, April 29. Connecticut—Jewett City, April 23; Hartford, April 23. Massachusetts—Boston, April 13; Taunton, April 20; Wilmington, April 26. Vermont—Wells River, April 25; St. Johnsbury, May 5; Rutland, May 7. New Hampshire—Charlestown, April 26; Tilton, May 2. Maine—Portland, April 26; Phillips, May 2. Quebec—Montreal, April 25. New Brunswick—Scotch Lake, May 7. Mississippi—Suffolk, March 22. Arkansas—Delight, March 29; Clinton, March 30. Tennessee—Athens, March 24. Kentucky—Eubank, April 2; Bowling Green, April 6. Missouri—Palmyra, April 9; St. Louis, April 13. Illinois—Chicago, April 13; Port Byron, April 23. Indiana—Fort Wayne, April 11; Bicknell, April 12; Lafayette, April 16. Ohio—Columbus, April 13; Wauseon, April 16; Youngstown, April 18. Michigan—Detroit, April 15; Sault Ste. Marie, May 3. Ontario—Ottawa, April 25; Toronto, April 28. Iowa—Keokuk, April 11; Sabula, April 16; Iowa City, April 18. Wisconsin—Milwaukee, April 21; Madison, April 26. Minnesota—Lanesboro, April 17; Elk River, April 24; St. Vincent, May 11. Texas—Grapevine, April 7. Kansas—Onaga, April 19; Topeka, April 20. North Dakota—Larimore, May 20. Manitoba—Aweme, May 1; Raeburn, May 1.

Fall migration.—Late dates of fall departure are: Manitoba—Aweme, September 27. Minnesota—Elk River, September 23; Lanesboro, October 2. Iowa—Keokuk, October 2; Sabula, October 4. Missouri—Concordia, October 3; Palmyra, October 12. Ontario—Ottawa, October 16; Point Pelee, October 17. Michigan—Sault Ste. Marie, September 23; Detroit, October 6. Ohio—Wauseon, September 20. Indiana—Bicknell, September 21; Fort Wayne, September 22. Illinois—Port Byron, September 19. Kentucky—Eubank, October 4. Tennessee—Athens, October 3. Arkansas—Delight, October 4. New Brunswick—Scotch Lake, September 8. Maine—Phillips, October 6. New Hampshire—Ossipee, October 2. Vermont—Wells River, September 14; Rutland, September 21. Massachusetts—Harvard, October 10. Connecticut—Hartford, October 18. New Jersey—Morristown, October 10. Pennsylvania—Berwyn, October 5; Philadelphia, October 11. District of Columbia—Washington, October 13. West Virginia—French Creek, October 2. North Carolina—Raleigh, November 6.

Casual records.—The whippoorwill has been recorded, either by its call or by the collection of specimens, at several points outside its normal range. One was taken at Port Collins, Colo., on September 14, 1903, and one was heard at Eastend, in southwestern Saskatchewan, on August 29, 1919. In North Dakota, two specimens have been obtained at Grafton, one on October 9, 1923, and the other on May 24, 1924, while it was recorded at Stump Lake in the spring of 1910 and also at Cando. It has been noted occasionally near Wichita, Kans., and one was noted at Harper, Kans., on May 1, 1936. During the period July 5 to September 22, 1905, one was heard calling on Isle Royale, Mich., and in the summer of 1922 one was heard on the Cascapedia River, Gaspe Peninsula, Quebec. In Puerto Rico a specimen was collected for Cory, probably in 1888, and Wetmore reported seeing a bird that he felt certain was this species on December 23, 1911, near the experimental station at Rio Piedras.

Egg dates.—Arizona: 12 records, May 3 to August 8; 6 records, May 22 to June 12, indicating the height of the season.

Connecticut: 9 records, May 20 to June 18.

Illinois: 39 records, May 9 to July 26; 20 records, May 18 to June 17.

West Virginia: 40 records, May 6 to July 7; 20 records, May 15 to June 3.

ANTROSTOMUS VOCIFERUS ARIZONAE Brewster

STEPHENS’S WHIPPOORWILL

Plate 24

HABITS

This southwestern race of the whippoorwill is found in southern Arizona and New Mexico, in southwestern Texas, and southward through the mountains of northern Mexico, being replaced by another subspecies farther south. Although it is common enough in some of the Arizona mountain ranges, it is oftener heard than seen. It sits so closely, is so inactive during the day, and is so protectively colored that it is easily overlooked. The use of a flashlight at night will often enable one to locate one of these birds by the “eye-shine,” even at considerable distance.

William Brewster (1881), in naming this subspecies, described it as “generally similar to A. vociferus but much larger; with the rictal bristles considerably longer; the gular crescent and a pretty well defined superciliary stripe, ochraceous; the lores and auriculars tawny ochraceous. The white of the tail barely tipping the outer web of the lateral tail feathers and on the others confined to a narrow apical space; the under tail-coverts nearly without barring.”

Mr. Brewster’s type came from the Chiricahua Mountains, Ariz., where they were evidently common, for Frank Stephens, the collector, wrote to him: “I have heard several of these Whip-poor-wills singing at one time and am told that they were heard here last year. I hear A. nuttalli every evening. They keep high up the mountain sides, while A. vociferus affects the lower part of the cañons.”

Harry S. Swarth (1904) says that this whippoorwill is a “fairly abundant summer resident” in the Huachuca Mountains, Ariz., “occurring principally between 5000 and 8000 feet; they may occasionally occur at a little higher elevation, but I have never seen any below the lowest altitude given.”

A. J. van Rossem (1936) writes:

The vertical range of Stephens’s Whip-poor-will is not limited to the higher mountains. Above 6000 feet in the Santa Ritas many birds were heard on every occasion that we stayed out after dark, but I also heard a whip-poor-will several times at 5000 feet in the Atascos and Dr. Miller collected a specimen at Peña Blanca Spring, Pajarito Mountains, in June, 1931. These two localities are well down in the Upper Sonora Zone.

I took, all told, six specimens of this common, though seldom collected, whip-poor-will and saw or heard several times that number. In the Santa Ritas they showed a decided preference for groves of oaks and sycamores in the cañon bottoms, and nearly all of those which were found at night were feeding in the immediate vicinity of running water. A pair to the mile seemed to be normal in most cañons which contained water and it was obvious that each pair had its own territory.

Spring.—Mr. Swarth (1904) saw the first arrival in 1903 “on April 28, and soon after their notes could be heard every evening, usually from some thickly wooded hillside, near the bottom of the canyon.” But Mr. Stephens wrote to Mr. Brewster (1881): “I heard the first Whip-poor-will about the middle of May. By June 1, they were as common as I ever knew them to be in the East. Sometimes I could hear three or four whistling at once.”

Nesting.—We did not succeed in finding a nest of Stephens’s whippoorwill in the Huachuca Mountains, but my companion, Frank C. Willard, had previously found one there on May 24, 1899; the nest was on the ground at the base of a bush, and the eggs were lying on a few dead leaves; it was at an elevation of about 6,000 feet.

Mr. Stephens wrote to Major Bendire (1895): “The locality where I found the egg was a gulch near the summit of the Chiricahua Mountains, in a thick forest of yellow pine. The nest, if it can be called so, was a slight depression scratched in the ground, under the edge of a bowlder.”

Dr. A. K. Fisher sent Bendire the following notes:

The Whip-poor-will’s note was not heard at Fort Bowie, Arizona, during the last three weeks of May, 1894. When we made camp at the mouth of Rucker Canyon, some forty miles south of the Post, in the Chiricahua Mountains, on the last day of the month, we heard a few, and a couple of days later found the species abundant higher up in the same canyon, among the pines (P. ponderosa). Here at early dusk and at dawn their notes were heard almost continuously, and numbers of birds were seen. On June 5 Mr. Fred. Hall Fowler found a nest, if the slight depression in the ground can be so designated, on a steep side hill about 50 feet above the stream. It was situated under an overhanging bush at the edge of a flat rock, and contained two young, recently hatched, and the fragments of egg shells from which they had emerged.

Mr. Fowler wrote to Bendire concerning the same nest: “The eggs were deposited on a bed of oak leaves by the side of a large rock; there was no nest excepting the bare leaves, which had been hollowed out slightly.”

Mr. van Rossem (1936) found this whippoorwill nesting in the Santa Rita Mountains, Ariz., of which he writes:

Though males, and sometimes, before eggs were laid, mated pairs, were invariably found in the cañon beds, the two nests discovered were on hillsides at least a quarter of a mile from water. On the night of June 6, 1931, I caught the red eye-shine of a whippoorwill some distance away (estimated by daylight at 150 yards) and across a steep-banked cañon. With no expectation of collecting anything I followed the trail to a point where I estimated the shine to have been, but could locate nothing and supposed that the bird had gone. On my return to the original spot the eye was seen in the same location as before, and this time, after a little search, I found a female sitting under the protection of a fallen spray of leafless twigs which lay on a steep bank beside the trail. Three of us had passed within five or six feet of this sitting bird on two occasions the day before. The sitting bird made no effort to escape and was picked up by hand. There was one nearly fresh egg in the shallow depression in the gravelly soil which served as a nest, and stuck to the ventral plumage of the incubating female were several small pieces of shell, showing that another egg had been laid and somehow broken.

Eggs.—The two eggs laid by Stephens’s whippoorwill have been said to be pure, immaculate white, but this is not always the case. Mr. Brewster (1882) says of the egg sent to him by Mr. Stephens: “The egg is white with a dull gloss. At first sight it appears to be immaculate, but a closer inspection reveals a few faint blotches of the palest possible purple, so faint indeed that they might pass for superficial stains were it not for the fact that they underlie the external polish.” This egg measures 29.72 by 22.10 millimeters.

Mr. van Rossem (1936) says of the egg referred to above: “This single egg was by no means immaculate white, but was clouded and mottled with brown and lilac, mostly in the nature of semi-concealed shell markings. It was similar to but very much less highly colored than eggs of the eastern vociferus, however.” Another nest, found by him later, “contained one pure white egg and a newly hatched chick.”

Philo W. Smith, Jr. (1900), received two sets of eggs, taken by O. C. Poling in the Huachuca Mountains, which “very much resemble in shape and color sets of the common Poor Will in his collection, being possibly a trifle larger, and one egg of each set has a few almost imperceptible pinkish spots on one end, the other egg in each set being unspotted.”

There is a set of two eggs in the Thayer collection, taken in the Chiricahua Mountains, Ariz., on June 6, 1904, by Virgil W. Owen, that are decidedly spotted. These eggs are oval and only moderately glossy. The ground color is pure white, and both eggs are finely and irregularly marked with small spots and minute dots of “pale Quaker drab,” “pallid Quaker drab,” and very pale “clay color.”

The measurements of 29 eggs average 28.8 by 20.8 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 30.9 by 21.8, 29.0 by 22.6, 25.8 by 20.1, and 28.9 by 19.9 millimeters.

Plumages.—I have not seen the downy young of this subspecies, but the two newly hatched chicks, taken by Mr. Fowler, are described as “covered with light brown down, and were not more than 1½ inches long.” Mr. van Rossem (1936) describes a newly hatched chick as “clothed with a very respectable covering of down—in color between ‘cinnamon’ and ‘orange-cinnamon’ of Ridgway.”

I have not seen enough material to work out the molts of this race, but I suppose that they are not very different from those of the eastern whippoorwill. Mr. Brewster’s type was a male, which is described above. He later received an adult female from Mr. Stephens, of which he says (1882): “This specimen differs even more widely from the female, than does my type from the male of A. vociferus. The ochraceous of the lores, superciliary-stripe, and neck-collar, spreads over the entire plumage both above and beneath, giving it a tawny tinge which overlies and obscures the usual dark markings. On the shoulders, breast, lores and throat this color deepens to a fine reddish-chestnut, and elsewhere it replaces the ashy, dirty white and other light tints of the eastern birds. In its general coloring the plumage strikingly resembles that of the brown phase of Scops asio kennicotti.”

Mrs. Florence M. Bailey (1928) says that the young male is “similar to adult male but top of head spotted instead of streaked with black, throat band indistinct, wing coverts and scapulars broadly barred with dusky, and irregularly marked with black; underparts barred with dusky on a brownish buffy ground. Young female: Similar to young male but outer tail feathers tipped with brownish buff instead of white.”

Behavior.—The food, feeding habits, and general behavior of Stephens’s whippoorwill are apparently similar to those of its eastern relative. Mr. van Rossem noticed a peculiarity that I have not seen in the eastern bird, of which he writes: “A, to me, surprising circumstance, was the marked erectability of the feathers above the eyes. Both of the sitting females carried these tufts constantly erect the entire time they were under observation. A male seen from directly in front alternately raised and flattened them. On one previous occasion, when night hunting in El Salvador, I had observed the eastern subspecies (vociferus) to have markedly erectile tufts; in fact until I picked the bird up I was certain that I had shot some small ‘eared’ owl. About 45% from the horizontal was the maximum elevation, though when viewed from directly in front the tufts appear nearly vertical.”

Fall.—Mr. Swarth (1904) says that, in the Huachucas, “they seem to remain rather late in the fall, as at the end of August their notes were heard as frequently as ever, and I have a female taken by H. Kimball on September 29, 1895. An adult male secured on August 29, 1902, had not yet quite completed its moult.”

PHALAENOPTILUS NUTTALLI NUTTALLI (Audubon)

NUTTALL’S POORWILL

HABITS

Nuttall’s poorwill is the best known and the most widely distributed race of this species, occupying a wide range in western North America, from southern Canada to Mexico and from the Great Plains to eastern California. Major Bendire (1895) says of its haunts:

In some of its habits it differs considerably from the preceding species of this family which are almost entirely confined to the denser woodlands; the Poor-will, however, although frequently found in similar localities, is apparently equally as much at home on the open prairie and the almost barren and arid regions of the interior, which are covered only here and there with stunted patches of sage (Artemisia) and other desert plants. The climate does not seem to affect it much, as it inhabits some of the hottest regions of the continent, like Death Valley, in southeastern California, as well as the slopes of the Rocky and Blue mountains, in Oregon, where it reaches altitudes of from 6,000 to 8,000 feet. I have heard the Poor-will in Bear Valley, Oregon, in a locality where frost could be found every month in the year.

Dr. Alexander Wetmore (1932) writes: “At times poorwills are found in growths of low forests, but they are more often encountered in regions where dense clumps of brush are scattered over otherwise open ground, as is common in desert and semiarid localities, or in brush-grown, rocky canyons, where the ground is rough and strewn with bowlders.”

Referring to the Huachuca Mountains, in Arizona, Harry S. Swarth (1904) says: “I found the Poor-will quite abundant during the summer months in the foothill region and in the lower parts of the canyons; but though most numerous below 5000 feet they were by no means restricted to these parts, for I saw or heard some in all parts of the mountains occasionally up to an altitude of nearly 10,000 feet.”

George F. Simmons (1925) designates its haunts in Texas as “high, gravelly flats or bits of plateau grown with post oak timber and with occasional moist spots; gravel patches dotted with catsclaw bushes, located in post oak growth on slopes and flat tops of hills; high prairies on rough ground along the terraces of valleys; bare ground on rocky hillsides; among shrubbery or on semi-arid flats.”

Nesting.—The nesting of the poorwill is a very simple affair. The two eggs are laid on the bare ground, without any semblance of nest building; a slight hollow may be scraped in the bare earth, or the eggs may be laid on hard gravelly ground, or even on a flat rock. The exact spot chosen for a nest site may be in full sunlight, but oftener it is at least partially shaded by some bush, often a greasewood bush or a bunch of sagebrush, or some other bunch of vegetation. The only eggs taken by Major Bendire (1895) were “laid on the bare ground under a small grease-wood bush (Obione) and were fully exposed to the sun,” near Tucson, Ariz. Prof. D. E. Lantz wrote to him from Kansas, regarding the nesting habits of the poorwill in that region, that “with one exception the eggs taken were laid upon bare patches of gravel or on low, flat rocks, and placed usually near a bunch of weeds or a tuft of grass. The exception was a set found on the bare ground in an alley in Manhattan City. This alley was in constant use and it was strange that the eggs remained for so long a time undisturbed, for when taken incubation had begun in both eggs. The Poor-wills usually keep to the vicinity of steep hills and old dead grass. They seem to return to the same locality from year to year to breed.”

E. S. Cameron (1907), reporting from Montana, says: “On June 26, 1907, Mr. M. M. Archdale flushed a Poor-will from her two white eggs on a steep hillside in some rough pine brakes at his ranch near Knowlton. In this unfrequented place the eggs were fully exposed on the bare earth amidst the pines. On June 28, we went together to the place intending to photograph the eggs, but they had been already removed by the bird.”

Eggs.—The two eggs of the poorwill are generally said to be pure white, but Bendire (1895) says that the color is not pure white and that “on close inspection it can readily be seen that it is a delicate cream, with a faint pinkish tint which does not perceptibly fade. Eggs in the collection taken more than twenty years ago still plainly show this peculiar tint. The eggs are unspotted as a rule, but an occasional specimen shows a few faint, darker shell markings around one end, which are barely perceptible to the naked eye, and which fade considerably in time.”

In shape the eggs vary from oval to elliptical-oval; and they are only moderately glossy. The measurements of 50 eggs average 26.3 by 19.9 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 28.9 by 19.8, 27.5 by 21.6, 22.1 by 19.3, and 24.6 by 18.1 millimeters.

Young.—The period of incubation does not seem to be definitely known. Dr. Wetmore (1932) says: “Both birds are said to assist in incubation. When disturbed about the nest, they tumble about and with widely opened mouths make a loud hissing sound terrifyingly like the hissing of a snake.”

Robert B. Rockwell writes to me that he found a female with two young “as large as an ordinary week or ten days old chick. They were squatting perfectly motionless on the ground, about a foot apart, each in the shadow of something. Their feathers were quite well developed. They made no move when I picked them up, but opened their eyes when I put them down again.”

Plumages.—Elmer C. Aldrich (1935) describes the downy young of the dusky poorwill, less than a day old and about 2½ inches long, as covered with a rich buff down. Ridgway (1914) describes the downy covering of a young nuttalli as “vinaceous-buff, paler on underparts.” Two small partially downy young in my collection are showing the growth of the first plumage on the forehead, crown, nape, back, and scapulars; these feathers are dull buffy white, minutely sprinkled with grayish, and have small spots and narrow bars of black; the new feathers on the underparts and flanks are dull white, indistinctly barred with dusky; the wings are less than one-third grown, and the tail is just sprouting.

Ridgway (1914) says of the young in juvenal plumage: “Not essentially different from adults, but markings in general less sharply defined, especially on underparts, and throat patch buff instead of white.”

I have been unable to learn anything about the molts of either young or adults, but Dr. Joseph Grinnell (1908) says that a specimen in juvenal plumage, “taken August 22, shows many feathers of the full adult plumage in the throat and breast. The juvenal plumage is characterized by having the throat patch buff and the back conspicuously mixed with cinnamon-rufus.”

A young male, collected by Van Tyne and Sutton (1937) in Brewster County, Tex., on May 25, was in the midst of the postjuvenal molt; “the crown is uniform gray, without any suggestion of a dark central patch, the feathers being only lightly speckled with black. * * * The chest lacks entirely the black patch and band, the feathers being lightly and indistinctly tipped with tawny and whitish.”

The so-called frosted poorwill (nitidus) is now regarded as merely a color phase of nuttalli.

Food.—The food of the poorwill consists, so far as it appears by the data available, entirely of insects, mostly the smaller, night-flying species, such as moths, beetles, chinch bugs, and locusts. Mrs. Bailey (1928) says that “in one stomach, 80 per cent of the contents was grasshoppers and locusts.” Many of these insects are caught on the wing in the capacious mouths of these birds, but many are also picked up on the ground.

Dr. R. W. Shufeldt (1885) noticed a poorwill “apparently amusing himself by making short jumps of two feet or more up in the air, then resting on the road to repeat the performance in a moment or so. Another was going through similar capers on the broad walk. They seemed to be perfectly oblivious to my presence, and, indeed, some children further along were trying to catch them with their hands.” He shot one of the birds, and “was much surprised to find in its mouth some four or five quite sizable moths, and the upper portion of the oesophagus was filled with a wad of a dozen or fifteen more. Fully half of these were yet alive, and two or three managed to fly away when freed from the bodies of their more disabled companions. This, then, is what the bird was up to; instead of flying about as a Nighthawk does, taking his insect prey in a conspicuous manner upon the wing, he captures it in the way I have described above.”

A. Brazier Howell (1927) writes:

August 28, 1926, I was sitting near midnight, on the observation platform of the California Limited as it stopped at Needles, California. It was with much interest that I then noted at least three poorwills (Phalaenoptilus nuttalli nitidus?) hawking about a powerful arc light in the railway yards close by. The observation point of one of these was upon the top of a board fence well within the circle of illumination; of the others, some point out of my direct vision and just beyond the fence. One after the other, until my train left ten minutes later, they would flutter up in their quest for insects, not just somewhere near the light but apparently right against the glass globe which inclosed the arc, returning each time to their respective stations for observation.

Mrs. Bailey (1928) says: “When hunting for food the Poor-will skims swiftly and noiselessly close over the ground with irregular turnings and windings and rests between, and when its catch contains hard indigestible parts like the wing coverts of beetles, ejects them in the form of pellets, as do the hawks and owls, kingfishers, and others of similar food habits. A road through a forest with its abundant flies and insects is said to be one of its favorite hunting grounds.”

The stomach of one taken by Van Tyne and Sutton (1937) on May 25 in Brewster County, Tex., was crammed with four large June beetles (Phyllophaga sp.) and a large army ant (male Eciton sp.).

Behavior.—Mrs. Bailey (1928) says that a poorwill, wounded by Mr. Bailey, exhibited a surprising method of defense; he “opened his mouth wide and hissed and blew and flopped about on the ground, always facing the enemy. Blowing like a blow snake and opening and shutting his mouth, he was enough to terrify all minor enemies.”

Referring to the eye-shine, common among the Caprimulgidae, Mrs. Bailey quotes Dr. Bergtold as saying: “While motoring at night through a particularly dark canyon, I noticed far ahead in the illuminated road, two small glowing pink spots which were extinguished when a bird flew from the road on the near approach of the car. The bird alighted again, some distance ahead in the road, when the pink spots reappeared and were identified as the bird’s eyes; it was shot and proved to be a Poor-will.”

Dr. Wetmore (1932) says that poorwills “rest during the day on the ground, though after night, when feeding or calling, may seek higher perches on stones or posts or on low branches. On one occasion I saw one by bright moonlight calling from a bush, where it perched crosswise on a small limb, like any ordinary bird, though ordinarily they rest lengthwise of branches, like others of their family.”

Dr. Elliott Coues (1874) says: “Like others of its family, Nuttall’s Whippoorwill is oftener heard than seen. When flushed from its retreat in the daytime, among the shrubbery or tall weeds, it rises hurriedly with wayward flight, dashes a few yards, and re-alights. There is something about it at such times that strongly recalls the Woodcock, and the bird is quite as difficult to shoot on the wing.”

Voice.—The call of the poorwill is generally recorded as a clear pronunciation of its name, but many observers have noted a third syllable, audible at only a short distance, making the complete song sound like poor-will-low, or poor-will-ee, when the bird is near, or poor-will when farther away, or even p’-will when still farther away. Mr. Simmons (1925) writes it puih-whee-ee.

Dr. Coues (1874) says: “This cry is very lugubrious, and in places where the birds are numerous the wailing chorus is enough to excite vague apprehensions on the part of the lonely traveler, as he lies down to rest by his camp-fire, or to break his sleep with fitful dreams, in which lost spirits appear to bemoan their fate and implore his intercession.”

Some other writers give a less unpleasant impression of the song; for instance, Dr. Wetmore (1932) says: “Near at hand these calls are harsh, but with distance the first two assume a pleasant, somewhat melancholy cadence.” And Mrs. Bailey (1928) writes: “When we were camped on the edge of a canyon in the Guadalupe Mountains, at dusk while the bats were flying down in the canyon, up along the edge came the Poor-wills so near that we could hear their syllables distinctly—poor-will´-uck, poor-will´-uck. Sometimes two would call antiphonally, faster and faster till they fairly tripped over each other. The call as it is often given is a delightfully soft, poor-will´, poor-will´, poor-will´-uck, which like the delicious aromatic smell of the sagebrush clings long to the memory of the lover of the west.”

Henry W. Henshaw (1875) says that “their notes are most often noticed in early evening, and again just before dawn, but not infrequently their song is heard through the entire night. * * * When flying, they emit a constantly repeated clucking note, which is, I think, common to both sexes. * * * The males continue their notes till very late in the season; for I frequently heard them during the first part of October, and even as late as the 17th.”

Field marks.—In superficial appearance the poorwill looks very much like a small whippoorwill, and its behavior is similar. It also somewhat resembles a partly grown young nighthawk, but its behavior is different; whereas the nighthawk flies about high in the air in pursuit of its prey, the poorwill hunts on or near the ground, flitting about like a large moth on silent wings; the poorwill is more strictly nocturnal in its activities than the nighthawk; furthermore, it exhibits no white patch in the wing, while flying, but shows white tips on the lateral tail feathers. Its note is, of course, characteristic.

Winter.—The poorwill retires from the northern portions of its range late in fall and spends the winter near, or beyond, our southern borders. Dr. Coues (1874) reports, in some notes from Ogden, Utah, that “it lingers at its summer home till the autumn is far advanced, as we found it at Ogden as late as October 6, quite far up the slope of the mountains, in the midst of a driving snow-storm—the first of the season—the snow having then already accumulated to the depth of several inches.”

In Arizona, New Mexico, and central Texas it is usually absent from late in October to early in April. It apparently winters more or less regularly in southern Texas, though its main winter range is in Mexico.

DISTRIBUTION

Range.—Central and western United States, and southern British Columbia, south to central Mexico.

Breeding range.—The breeding range of the poorwill extends north to southern British Columbia (Kamloops and Okanagan Landing); Montana (Billings and Terry); northwestern South Dakota (Slim Buttes); north-central Nebraska (Long Pine Canyon); and southwestern Iowa (Pottawattamie County). East to southwestern Iowa (Pottawattamie County); eastern Kansas (Blue Rapids, Onaga, Lawrence, and Clearwater); central Texas (Kerrville, San Antonio, and Somerset); eastern Coahuila (Sabinas and Saltillo); and probably Morelos (Cuernavaca). South to probably Morelos (Cuernavaca); southern Sonora (Alamos); and southern Baja California (San Jose del Cabo). West to Baja California (San Jose del Cabo, Miraflores, Triunfo, Pozo Grande, San Fernando, Santo Domingo, La Joya, San Telmo, and probably Todos Santos Islands); California (San Diego, Escondido, Ojai Valley, Santa Cruz Mountain, San Geronimo, Covel, and probably Yreka); Oregon (Brownsboro, Bridge Creek, and probably Netarts); eastern Washington (Crab Creek and Cheney); and British Columbia (Summerland and Kamloops).

Winter range.—The species is probably resident in the southern part of its range and during the winter season is found north to southern California (Berryessa Station, Paicines, Death Valley, and Laguna); rarely southern Arizona (Tucson); and southern Texas (El Paso, rarely Kerrville, Laredo, and Falfurrias).

The range as outlined is for the entire species, which has been separated into four currently recognized geographic races. The typical subspecies, Nuttall’s poorwill (P. n. nuttalli) occupies all the United States portion of the range except that part of California west of the Sierra Nevada. The dusky poorwill (P. n. californicus) is found in western California from the northern part of the Sacramento Valley south to northwestern Baja California; the desert poorwill (P. n. hueyi) is restricted to the lower Colorado River Valley, southwestern Arizona, and northeastern Baja California; and the San Ignacio poorwill (P. n. dickeyi) is found in Baja California south of latitude 30° N.

Spring migration.—Early dates of spring arrival are: Texas—Kerrville, February 4; San Antonio, February 27. Kansas—Manhattan, April 7; Onaga, April 7. New Mexico—Chloride, March 31; State College, April 7; Rinconada, April 10. Colorado—Beulah, April 29; Denver, May 9. Wyoming—Laramie Peak, May 2; Lingle, May 3. Montana—Terry, May 16. Arizona—Tombstone, March 20. Utah—Kobe Valley, May 23. California—Piedra, March 5; Daggett, March 12; San Clemente Island, March 30; Lassen Peak, April 16. British Columbia—Okanagan Landing, April 22.

Fall migration.—Late dates of fall departure are: British Columbia—Okanagan Landing, September 20. California—Daggett, October 21; Los Angeles, October 25; La Verne, October 28; Garnsey, November 2. Arizona—San Francisco Mountain, September 29. Montana—Big Sandy, September 4; Bighorn River, September 19. Wyoming—Powder River, September 9; Clear Fork, September 19. Colorado—Beulah, October 8. New Mexico—State College, October 30; Sierra Hachita, November 24. South Dakota—White River, September 27. Kansas—Onaga, September 27. Oklahoma—Kenton, September 26.

Egg dates.—Arizona: 5 records, May 2 to August 2.

California: 42 records, March 22 to August 8; 21 records, May 6 to June 25, indicating the height of the season.

Colorado: 5 records, May 26 to July 27.

Texas: 11 records, April 29 to June 20.

PHALAENOPTILUS NUTTALLI CALIFORNICUS Ridgway

DUSKY POORWILL

Plates 25–27

HABITS

The goatsuckers are now in their proper place in the A. O. U. Check-list, showing their relationship to the owls, which they strikingly resemble in several characters. The poorwills are conspicuous in this respect; they are more strictly nocturnal in their activities than some of the owls, for which they are well adapted; the eyes are very large, suggesting those of owls; the mouth is very broad, but some of the owls have broad mouths also; the plumage is fully as soft as that of the owls; and their flight is noiseless, like that of most night-flying birds. The Caprimulgidae are not predators on vertebrate animals, although the chuck-will’s-widow has been known to eat birds; but they all live on animal food; and many owls live largely on insects.

The dusky poorwill does not enjoy so extensive a distribution as its inland relative, nuttalli, but perhaps it is equally as well known throughout its range in California.

Nesting.—The steep slopes and ridges of the foothills and the sides of canyons seem to form the favorite nesting haunts of this, as well as other poorwills. Elmer C. Aldrich (1935) gives a very good description of a locality in Tuolumne County, Calif., where a nest was found on July 5, 1934:

The altitude was about 5600 feet, and the general vegetation of the area consisted of yellow pines, incense cedars, white firs, black oak islands, a few species of ceanothus, and a little manzanita, with mountain misery covering most of the open hillside. The immediate location of the nest was in a little circular clearing about fifteen yards in diameter, surrounded by young yellow pines closely knit together by small, interwoven branches. The clearing contained three manzanita bushes and one ceanothus bush. The greater part of it was strewn with long dead pole-like logs, which appeared to be one of the basic requirements for the Poor-will’s protection. The entire north side of the opening was bordered by a large decayed log of a diameter of three feet, which, because of the common use by the Poor-will, came to be called “the log.”

The nest was found when we were coming from the north and upon advancing four yards after stepping over this log. When the adult flushed from the nest the observer’s foot was but eighteen inches from the site. The bird flew across the clearing into the edge of the dense forest, where it lit on a small log and watched without movement for fifteen minutes while pictures of the two light buff eggs were obtained.

Dr. William L. Holt writes to me that he found a nest near Banning, Calif., on June 13, 1909, on the bare ground on the north side of a sandy hill, nearly bare of vegetation. J. E. Patterson has sent me two excellent photographs (pls. 25, 26) of poorwills’ nests. The one taken in Stanislaus County, Calif., on June 23, 1934, was on the ground in open timber; the other, taken in Mariposa County, Calif., on June 21, 1933, was on the ground in a fire deadening on a hillside; both were in the Transition Zone.

A. J. van Rossem (1920) found a nest on April 18, 1919, a very early date, on the side of a canyon, where there was a heavy growth of wild lilac and white sage; “no attempt whatever seemed to have been made at constructing a nest, the eggs lying on the bare ground among pebbles, etc., in the shade of some dense brush that bordered upon a small open space.” The nest has also been found on bare rock, but is usually, at least partially, shaded by some bush, loose brush, brakes, or weeds. The birds are very apt to return to the exact spot to nest each year.

Eggs.—As a rule the eggs of the dusky poorwill, two in number, are similar to the eggs of other poorwills, but van Rossem and Bowles (1920) write:

In a majority of the descriptions that are given for eggs of the various forms of the Poor-will, the color is stated as white, without markings, sometimes with a pinkish tinge. However, such was by no means the case with the set of eggs under discussion. Before blowing, the ground color was a strong salmon pink; but this, after blowing, turned to a clear, glossy, pinkish white, strongly suggesting eggs of the Merrill Pauraque (Nyctidromus albicollis merrilli), although the pink of the Poor-will eggs showed a closer approach to salmon. Around the larger ends was a rather dense wreath of lavender and dusky spots and dots, making the eggs look exceedingly like the marked eggs of some small petrel. * * * In the course of time many of the smaller dots have faded out, leaving only a comparatively few spots and dots to show where the heavy wreath was once located. The strong pinkish tinge has also very largely gone, in spite of the fact that the eggs have been carefully kept from exposure to the light.

The measurements of 40 eggs average 26.3 by 19.4 millimeters; the eggs showing the four extremes measure 28.4 by 20.0, 27.7 by 21.1, 24.2 by 18.2, and 24.9 by 17.0 millimeters.

Behavior.—Poorwills are notoriously close sitters, but the pair studied by Mr. Aldrich (1935) were unusually tame. He was repeatedly able to approach cautiously to within 3 or 4 feet of the incubating bird; once, at night, eight observers managed to approach within 2 feet, while the bird sat tight all the time. The next morning, “when we were but three feet from the nest, the bird’s large clear white spots on the tail identified it to be the male that was doing the incubating. Many pictures were taken, some as close as ten inches, without the slightest sign of fear on the part of the sitting bird. * * * Experiments were made to find the extent of his ‘bravery’ by touching him. While touching the head the first time he flattened out his wings and spread the fan-like tail over the tips of them showing all the tail spots. The large head was then brought far back on the shoulders, the cavernous mouth opened extremely wide showing the pink interior, and a low guttural hiss was emitted at short intervals.”