172 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



Forbusli (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 be- 

 fore 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 Wliippoorwill 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 hefore 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 cer- 

 tain 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 



