DESERT POORWILL 197 



light. It would fly perhaps twenty or thirty feet into the air after 

 insects and return again within four or five feet of me. One time 

 it flew up and evidently picked an insect off the leaf of a wild cherry 

 tree, fluttering for several seconds in its endeavor to do so. It several 

 times flew by me after food and returning would fly within a foot or 

 so of my head and alight just in front of me." 



Voice. — H. Gordon Heggeness writes to me of the song of the 

 dusky poorwill as he heard it in the Sequoia National Park : "Some- 

 times early in the morning the poorwill would be heard — the calm, 

 liquid notes carrying far on the cool air. On August 12, 1935, a poor- 

 will began singing back of my cabin at 2 : 30 a. m. His most pleasing 

 notes were heard continuously for the next half hour." 



Grinnell and Storer (1924) write: "It is heard most persistently at 

 dusk of evening or in the early morning; but near Pleasant Valley 

 on the morning of May 23, 1915, one of these birds suddenly broke 

 out at 10 o'clock and uttered its poor-will-o 85 times (by comit, within 

 2 or 3) at intervals of two or three seconds." 



R. H. Lawrence wrote to Major Bendire (1895) that, according 

 to his hearing, "the words 'Pearl-rab-it' give a fair idea of its call"; 

 and that "when startled it gave quickly, two or three times in suc- 

 cession, a low, soft note, like 'pweek, pweek, pweek,' which could only 

 be heard a few yards away." 



PHALAENOPTILUS NUTTALLI HUEYI Dickey 



DESERT POORWILL 



HABITS 



Donald R. Dickey (1928) described and named this pale race of 

 the poorwill from a fine series of specimens collected in the valley 

 of the Colorado River by Mrs. May Canfield and Laurence M. 

 Huey. As to its subspecific characters, he says that it is "nearest 

 in color to the light type of Phalaenoptilus nuttdlli nuttalli (Audu- 

 bon), which Brewster named nitidits and to which he gave the 

 eminently fitting vernacular of the Frosted Poor-will, but averag- 

 ing very much lighter. The backs of hueyi are pinkish tan, almost 

 devoid of the silver frosting characteristic of more eastern birds, 

 and with the size of the dark dorsal 'owl's eye' marking greatly 

 reduced, in many cases practically obsolete; under parts lighter 

 throughout, with the dark band below the white collar narrower 

 and of lighter tone, and with narrower barring of sides and flanks. 

 Tail lighter and less contrastingly barred above and below." 



The 1931 Check-list gives the range of this race as the valley 

 of the lower Colorado River, in southeastern California, south- 

 western Arizona, and extreme northeastern Baja California. 



