Genus XLVII. CAPRIMULGUS. GOATSUCKER. 

 Species I. C. CAROLINENSIS* 



CHUCK-WILL'S-WIDOW. 



[Plate LIV. Fig. 2.] 



This solitary bird is rarely found to the north of James river in Vir- 

 ginia on the sea-board, or of Nashville in the state of Tennessee in the 

 interior ; and no instance has come to my knowledge in which it has 

 been seen either in New Jersey, Pennsylvania or Maryland. On my 

 journey south I first met with it between Richmond and Petersburg in 

 Virginia, and also on the banks of the Cumberland in Tennessee. 



Mr. Pennant has described this bird under the appellation of the 

 Short-winged Goatsucker (Arct. Zool. No. 3-36), from a specimen which 

 he received from Dr. Garden of Charleston, South Carolina ; but in 

 speaking of its manners he confounds it with the Whip-poor-will, though 

 the latter is little more than half the cubic bulk of the former, and its 

 notes altogether different. "In South Carolina," says this writer, 

 speaking of the present species, " it is called, from one of its notes, 

 Chuck, chuck-iviW s-tvidow ; and in the northern provinces Whip-poor- 

 will, from the resemblance which another of its notes bears to those 

 words. "f He then proceeds to detail the manners of the common 

 Whip-poor-will, by extracts from Dr. Garden and Mr. Kalm, which 

 clearly prove that all of them were personally unacquainted with that 

 bird ; and bad never seen or examined any other than two of our 

 species, the Short-winged or Chuck-will's-widow, and the Long-winged, 

 or Night Hawk, to both of which they indiscriminately attribute the 

 notes and habits of the Whip-poor-will. 



The Chuck-will's-widow, so called from its notes which seem exactly 

 to articulate those words, arrives on the sea coast of Georgia about the 

 middle of March, and in Virginia early in April. It commences its 

 singular call generally in the evening, soon after sunset, and continues 

 it with short occasional interruptions for several hours. Towards morn- 



* Gmel. Syst. I., p. 1028. — Lath. Ind. Orn. ii., p. 584. — Caprimulgus rufns, 

 ViEiLL. Ois. de I' Am. Sept. PI. 25, female. 

 t A ret. Zool. p. 434. 



(238) 



