The Chuck-Will's-Widow 



(Antrostomus Carolinenses) 



BY ANNIE E. WILSON, KY. 



THE " Chuck- Will," Southern Kinsman of the Whip-Poor- Will, so com- 

 mon in Florida, is a larger bird with a shorter note than its brother 

 of the North. In fact it is the largest species of the genus known in North 

 America. It is migratory, reaching Florida about March 10, and leaving 

 some time during the month of August. 



Its chant, beginning with a sort of " Chuck ! " like an exclamation 

 point, has but two distinct syllables which sound like "Where's Will? "and 

 is heard quite early in the evening, continuing for some hours into the night, 

 one answering another from tree to thicket as if the whole community of 

 Chuck- Will-dom were out hunting for a lost child. Then for a while they 

 are silent, too busy feeding, perhaps, to let their voices be heard. A few 

 hours before daylight they begin a short, final search for the missing waif 

 before retiring for the day. 



The waifs they are so diligently seeking are the large beetles and moths 

 upon which they feed and which like themselves turn night into day. The 

 motions and evolutions of the Chuck-Will as it darts after its prey are so 

 noiseless, so unimaginably quick it sometimes leaves its perch, captures an 

 insect and returns with no apparent interruption to its mournful lament, 

 not even a break between two notes. 



They generally breed in April or May, in a thicket of palmetto and low 

 undergrowth about three or four feet from the beaten path. The nest of 

 this bird is no nest at all. We accidently came upon one on the fourth of 

 May. There were only two eggs — little beauties, nearly as large as small 

 guinea eggs, of a creamy ground splotched all over with spots and dashes of 

 purplish brown. They were on the bare ground without the slightest pre- 

 tence of preparation or protection which, indeed, they would not need when 

 the mother bird covered them, as her own mottled coloring would be undis- 

 tinguishable from the dead leaf and twig covered earth. 



