174 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



edly during the final we, 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 whip- 

 poorwill 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 : 



Suddenly I hear a rather feeble whip, 12 times S. of me, then silence and 

 then a bird flies to the stone in front of my face, coming low over the bushes 

 and alighting with its tail towards me. It squeaks or clicks three times, 

 and I fear it suspects me and is giving a slight alarm note, but the next 

 moment it begins the piercing quif) o^rip slightly raising its head and dipping 

 its tail each time it makes the sound. The head rises on the quip and falls 

 on the rip. The wings do not move, nor the body save by a slight tipping. I 

 could see the bird's outline perfectly against the white background of the 

 shingled barn on which the moonlight fell fully. 



When the whippoorwill comes out in the dusk for its evening 

 round, alighting on a stone wall, on the ground, or on a big hori- 

 zontal branch high in a tall tree, we may sometimes catch sight of 

 it against the sky, as it flies from one station to another. In the air 

 the whippoorwill does not resemble the nighthawk at all. Its wings 

 are broad and, compared to those of the nighthawk, short, and it 

 moves them with an easy sweep, with none of the nighthawk's jerki- 

 ness. When we see it flying steadily across an open field, it suggests 

 an owl moving through the gloom on its broad, silent wings. 



Taverner and Swales (1907) give a remarkable description of the 

 flight of a whippoorwill seen under such circumstances at Point 

 Pelee, Ontario. They say : 



One evening, just as the dusk was darkening into night, a Whip-poor-will was 

 heard near the camp. We stole out, and the bird was located in a large bare 

 walnut tree in the open bush where, looking up against the still faintly 

 illuminated sky, it could be plainly made out, sitting lengthwise, as is their 

 fashion, on a rather large and almost horizontal branch. It remained perfectly 

 motionless except for an occasional jerk of its white blotched tail, when it 

 gave vent intermittently to a guttural "gluck." These notes were repeated at 



