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.”