The Whip-Poor- Will {Antrostomnsvociferus) 

 By Alexander Wilson 



Length, about 10 inches. Not to be confused with the nighthawk, which 

 flies by day and has white wing bars, while the whip-poor-will is crepuscular 

 and nocturnal. 



Range : Breeds from the Atlantic to the plains, and from Manitoba and the 

 eastern Canadian Provinces south to northern parts of Louisiana, Mississippi 

 and Georgia ; winters from South Carolina and the Gulf States to Central 

 America. 



This bird of the night, whose day begins with the going down of the sun 

 when the nighthawk's ends, is common throughout the east in open woodlands, 

 on the edges of which it likes to hunt. It dozes away the hours of daylight 

 squatting on the ground among the leaves where its marvelous protective colora- 

 tion affords it safety. No sooner have the shadows lengthened, however, than 

 it becomes active and its characteristic note resounds through the forest glades. 

 So plaintive is its cry and so mysterious its comings and goings, that in the 

 minds of many its notes are associated with misfortune, as a death in the house 

 near which it persistently calls. Its two eggs are laid among the leaves, needing 

 no other protection than the cover of the mother's body. The whip-poor-will 

 may be accounted one of our most efificient insect destroyers, as its immensely 

 capacious mouth beset with bristles, a regular insect trap, would suggest. Among 

 its prey it includes May beetles and moths. These two form the principal articles 

 of food and as they are parents respectively of the white grub worm and an 

 innumerable host of caterpillars their destruction is of marked benefit to agri- 

 culture. 



This is a singular and very celebrated species, universally noted over the 

 greater part of the United States for the loud reiterations of his favorite call in 

 spring. Yet personally he is but little known, most people being unable to dis- 

 tinguish this from the Nighthawk, when both are placed before them ; and some 

 insisting that they are the same. This being the case, it becomes the duty of his 

 historian to give a full and faithful delineation of his character and peculiarity 

 of manners, that his existence as a distinct and independent species may no longer 

 be doubted, nor his story mingled confusedly with that of another. I trust that 

 those best acquainted with him will bear witness to the fidelity of the portrait. 



On or about the twenty-fifth of April, if the season be not uncommonly 

 cold, the Whip-poor-will is first herd in the evening, as the dusk of twilight com- 

 mences, or at dawn in the morning. I first heard the Whip-poor-will on the 

 fourteenth of April. The notes of this solitary bird, from the ideas which are 

 naturally associated with them, seem like the voice of an old friend, and are 



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