Song Birds and Water Fowl 
hearty, and cheerful—to me the jovial bird of 
night, and yet considerably abused by all but 
poets and sentimentalists. If only it were 
usually heard amid daylight scenes, it would 
certainly rank among the brightest and most 
joyous sounds in nature ; but it is an instance 
where extraneous circumstances have such power 
to make or mar the effect. This region is a per- 
fect nest of whippoorwills, the woods on every 
side resounding with their cry ; chiefly about 
eight o’clock in the evening, and as a postlude 
to the Wilson thrushes; but whenever I wake in 
the night, I seldom fail to hear its call, as bright 
as moonlight, cheery as the dawn; and its last 
note in the early morning is a prelude for the 
robin’s opening song. 
This is the only bird in which I have ever 
heard the effect of a decided accelerando, which 
gives to the prolonged reiteration of the cry a 
very animated effect. Itssilent, shadowy figure, 
roaming about in the gloaming, might make it 
seem a bird of ill-omen to some, a dark an- 
tithesis of all that we count most bright and 
hopeful in bird-life—mysterious, vague, and in- 
auspicious. Yet, for all its ghastly flittings at 
twilight and midnight, motley coloring, awk- 
ward form, and inexpressible mouth, I believe 
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