Chapter 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.”