176 BULLETIN 17 6, UNITED STATES NATIONAL MUSEUM 



bath on a country road, and, as it flies off and our headlights pick it 

 up, the white tail feathers, if the bird is a male, shine out for an 

 instant. Forbush (1927) says: "Mr. Stanley H. Bromley of South- 

 bridge, Massachusetts, tells me that a farmer there placed a large tray 

 of dry wood ashes on the ground, and whippoorwills came there 

 at night to dust in it." 



Wilson (1831) states: "The inner edge of the middle claw is pecti- 

 nated, and, from the circumstances of its being frequently found with 

 small portions of down adhering to the teeth, is probably employed 

 as a comb to rid the plumage of its head of vermin." 



Voice. — If the whippoorwill "should smg by day, when every 

 goose is cackling," the song might lose some of its witchery; we do 

 not know; the bird sings in the dark, or when darkness is coming 

 on fast, and the singer is invisible or almost invisible among the 

 shadows. The song at a little distance comes to the ear as a pene- 

 trating whisper of the bird's name, repeated perfectly regularly, 

 time after time with scarcely a pause between, at a rather rapid 

 rate — about once a second. The fourth note, a cluck before the whip- 

 poor-will, is heard usually only when the bird is fairly near us, 

 although we may hear it at a distance of 200 yards under favorable 



circumstances. The syllable luill carries farthest of all the syllables. 



It is rare to hear any material variation in the song, but there 

 are individual birds that regularly sing an unusual form, and some- 

 times a bird will introduce occassionally one abnormal phrase into 

 his singing. 



Simeon Pease Cheney (1891), speaking from the point of view 

 of music, says: "In the courageous repetition of his name he accents 

 the first and last syllables, the last most; always measuring his song 

 with the same rhytlmi, while very considerably varying the melody — 

 which latter fact is discovered only by most careful attention. Plain, 

 simple, and stereotyped as his song appears, marked variations are 

 introduced in the course of it. The whippoorwill uses nearly all the 

 intervals in the natural scale, even the octave. I have never detected 

 a chromatic tone." Describing altercations between two or more 

 birds, he says : 



These altercations are sometimes very amusing. Three whippoorwills, two 

 males and a female, indulged in them for several evenings one season, in my 

 garden. They came just at dark, and very soon a spirited contest began. 

 Frequently they flew directly upward, one at a time. Occasionally one flew 

 down into the patch near me, put out his wings, opened his big mouth, and 

 hissed like a goose disturbed in the dark. But, the most peculiar, the astonish- 

 ing featxire of the contention was the finale. Toward the close of the trial of 

 speed and power, the unwieldy name was dropped, and they rattled on freely 

 with the same rhythm that the name would have required, alternating in their 

 rushing triplets, going faster and faster, louder and louder, to the end. 



