THE OOLOGIST 



76 



over, not to fade with time, I am 

 rather inclined to discredit it. But, 

 genuine Poor Will eggs are rougher, 

 and are, I imagine, inclined to as- 

 sume the normal shape of Petrel 

 eggs. They have, moreover, decided- 

 ly less of gloss than Mourning Dnve 

 eggs; and the white is a different tint 

 of white. Moreover, my first set ' of 

 eggs revealed, under electric lamp 

 scrutiny, a feature that wonderfully 

 shows the affinities, in oology, between 

 the eggs of allied species. Each egg, 

 when held, in tlie tubed hand against 

 an electric lamp, showed a' most deli- 

 cate circlet of palest lilac spots, near 

 the apex. 



All this while I am hearing some of 

 you whisper, "Well, what do you mean 

 by "The Haunts of Poor-Wilber?'" I'll 

 tell you: 



Three years ago, about the 25th of 

 May I went out upon my favorite hills 

 at sunset. I had, as yet, located no 

 Poor Wills, for the season; having 

 been quite too busy to go out to the 

 hills, and the birds never being found 

 anywhere else. The dusk began to 

 creep down over the hill-tops. The 

 day birds were all silent. Not a 

 sound came on to take their places. It 

 was not, then, until nearly dark that 

 I heard, in a far gorge, a faint call of 

 a Poor Will. For a while it sounded 

 there, wanly, faintly, all alone. But 

 soon it gathered vigor. And soon it 

 called forth response. One, two, three, 

 six Poor Wills began their piping, and 

 soon the hills wsre fairly resonant 

 with their cries. IL v.'?.s tlien, as 

 liardly ever before, that I had it im- 

 pressed upon me, as it had been firm- 

 ly fixed in my consciousness amid the 

 narrow, resonant canyon-walls of Cam- 

 bria, Wyoming, that the call of this 

 Caprimulge is not "poor-will," at all 

 Here, again, there comes to light a 

 sort of biological affinity between the 

 Poor Will and its near-kin, the Whip- 

 poor-will. Now, almost every one 

 knows that the latter has a sotto pre- 



lude note that is not ordinarily heard 

 by the non-critical listener. Yet, in 

 very truth, the actual song of this 

 bird is "(chuck) Whip-poor-will, 

 (chuck) Whip-poor-will," "and so, 

 wider." In like manner, tiie Poor Will. 

 Its real call is, and you should hear it, 

 in all its intense vibrance among the 

 Wyoming canyons, "Poor-will (ber), 

 poor-will (ber), poor-will (ber)" 



In closing, what think you all, about 

 the "Frosted" Poor-will? What think 

 you about the finding of "Common" 

 Poor Wills and "Frosted" Poor Wills 

 on the same hillside, at the same time, 

 a thing which scientific ornitholo- 

 gists claim can never be! Well, I 

 know what you think : You think 

 just what some of us think about the 

 distinction between the Ferrugineous 

 Rough-leg and the "American," North- 

 ern! Rough-leg, just what some of us 

 think a'bout the .forty-eleven species 

 and sub-species of Horned Owls, hob- 

 nobbing with each other, and with one 

 another, in the same habitat! 



Let me tell you a bit of a story: All 

 one winter, in picturesque "Eden," 

 Wyoming, did I watch, sometimes the 

 one and sometimes the other, of a 

 pair of Horned Owls, in the same "tim- 

 ber-claim." (It was a Cottonwood 

 grove, through which a baby tornado 

 had once passed, in summer, leaving 

 dead branches, yet dead-leafy, hang- 

 ing in the trees, fit roosts for day- 

 snoozing Owls). But one tearingly- 

 windy March day I passed through 

 that grove, and, what think you I saw? 

 In just such a dead-leaf-covered branch 

 as I have described, sitting so close 

 together that their bodies touched, was 

 that pair of Owls, and one of them was 

 a "Western" and the other a "Sub- 

 Arctic" Horned Owl! 



P. B. Peabody, 



Blue Rapids, Kansas. 



