144 



sisted in laer acrobatic tricks to try to draw me away from the nest and 

 she did in fact go tlirougli this same performance every time I visited her. 

 On the next day, July 2, I scared the mother from the nest by touch- 

 ing her on the head and the two little Whip-poor-wills both ran and hid 

 nnder a leaf. It took some little time for me to find them again. The 

 older now had promise of future feathers. Nothing was visible on the 

 younger but down. 



July 3, when I attempted to scare the mother bird from the nest she 

 liew around my head quite fiercely, touching my ear once with her wing 

 and then fell to the ground in her usual attitude of broken-back misery. 

 The older of the tuo young ones now had the beginning of some mottled 

 feathers. 



At 9 o'clock on the following morning, July 4, I arrived at the pen. 

 Imagine my surprise and chagrin to find the enclosure empty. Appar- 

 ently I was wrong and AVhip-poor-wilLs did carry their young away. 1 

 decided she could not carry them very far away so I commenced to "beat 

 the bushes around the pen. About ten feet north of the pen -I flushed the 

 mother bird. I looked down just in time to see young Whip-poor-will No. 

 1 run under a leaf but did not see No. 2 at all. I looked around under the 

 leaves for a few minutes and finally discovered No. 2 sitting calmly on an 

 old leaf right before my eyes. I brought them together and photographed 

 them. It was a warm day and they were directly in the sun's rays. In a 

 short time I noticed that their throats began to vibrate rapidly and each 

 uttered a few shrill peets. Both. then, almost simultaneously toddled off 

 ■•md stopped in the shelter of a little weed. I left them and examined the 

 pen. I found several places where ev(>n tlie old Whip-poor-will could get 

 (hrough. I therefore decided that she had coaxed them to follow her 

 instead of carrying them. So, to prove it, I brought a l)ox with the bottom 

 knocked out and about one and one-half feet high, and placed this over 

 tlie nest. I reasoned that if she carried them she could carry them out of 

 that box without any trouble; if she coaxed them they could not get out 

 as one and one-half feet was too much for the young ones. 



I returned three days later, July 7. The family were still there just as 

 1 liad left them. Whip-poor-will No. 1 now had a much better coat of 

 feathers, and quills were beginning to appear on No. 2. I made a visit to 

 the nest once every day now for four days and after scaring the Whip- 

 poor-will off would retire to a distance and then slip back softly. I found 

 that the mother bird invariably lit on the edge of the box before going to 



