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: