The Nesting of the Whip-poor-will 235 



cornfield over the garden fence, where for two weeks they hid among the 

 shocks and had good eating among the weeds along the borders, then — they 

 were gone; but all this time no gun had been fired at them, — that is, within 

 the sound of several pairs of acute ears. 



The ebb and flow of autumn bird-life, how can it be told or pictured? A 

 single book would not hold it all, or the rhythm and rhymes of the truest poet 

 ser\-e as a cage for it. Of how the Ducks fly over the garden to the swampy mar- 

 gins o' a near-by tide pond, or of the strange shadowy shapes of the fearless 

 young Night Herons, standing stupidly watchful by the same water until the 

 crucial moment comes, and the seemingly immovable beak darts forward to seize 

 a luckless frog or fish. Thenthedayarrives when the Gulls return to the beach, 

 and the Grebes once more flush and dive, and the lure of the garden is divided 

 with the lure of the sea. Yet the garden is home — the home where one is host. 

 There is a table to be spread, the table of winter brotherhood. For winter is the 

 great time of drawing together : of purification and the survival of the spiritually , as 

 well asphysically fittest; the conservation of forces against the Great Awakening. 



The Nesting of the Whip-poor-will 



By H. E. TUTTLE, Simsbury. Conn. 



THE guinea-hen had stolen her nest, as guinea-hens do. I had searched 

 the brush heap, sure of finding her, and had come away sore in mind 

 and body, for I had fallen through the pile of stumps and branches to 

 no purpose. 



I walked along, thinking e\i\ thoughts about guinea-hens, shuffling my 

 way through a small tract of stunted second-growth oak and chestnut sap- 

 lings, which lay close beside the henyard, and into which the wind seemed to 

 have swept all the dry leaves in the land. Then, up from my very feet, flutter- 

 ing lightly, like some gay butterfly, and colored like the chestnut leaf, wavered 

 a Whip-poor-will. I looked closely and found her eggs, two elongated eggs 

 with markings of lilac-gray. I thought no more of guinea-hens. The Whip- 

 poor-will fluttered along, waving her long wings outspread on the leaves. I 

 marked the spot and hurried away to tell the camera man. 



We walked up to her during the next day, armed with cameras, tripods 

 and string. She floated away, making guttural noises in her throat, and sat 

 crosswise of a limb watching us. She rarely sat in the orthodox Whip-poor-will 

 fashion, which is lengthwise of the limb or nearly so. We set the cameras and 

 went away to wait her return. After an hour or so I came back to spring the 

 shutters, but the bird was still sitting on the limb, and sound asleep? I woke 

 her by clapping my hands, and when I returned again she was cox'ering her 

 eggs. I pulled the string and heard the shutter click, but my photographs, in 

 this instance, were all failures. I never knew until after the young had flown, 



