2l8 MEMOIRS OF THE NUTTALL ORNITHOLOGICAL CLUB. 



113. Antrostomus vociferus (Wils.). 

 Whip-poor-will. 



Formerly a not uncommon summer resident ; now found chiefly and perhaps only during 

 migration. 



SEASONAL OCCURRENCE. 



April 25, 1891, one male heard (Concord), W. Brewster. 



April 30 — September 20. 

 September 25, 1895, one seen, Arlington, W. Faxon. 



NESTING DATES. 



May 26 — June 5. 



Lowell, writing in 1868, says :^ "I remember when the whippoorwill could 

 be heard in sweet Auburn." Perhaps it also nested there before the trees were 

 thinned and the undergrowth was cut away to prepare the place for a cemetery. 

 During the earlier years of my own field experience Whip-poor-wills were occa- 

 sionally started in early May in the dense evergreen woods just to the westward 

 of Mount Auburn, but in summer they were found only in the wilder parts of 

 Arlington, Belmont, Waltham, and Lexington, where they were generally, if 

 somewhat sparingly, distributed. The wooded hills and ridges bordering Rock 

 Meadow on the south and west, and those lying to the north of the Lyman 

 estate in Waltham, were then among the favorite haunts of the Whip-poor-will. 

 In the former locality I heard two males singing at once on the evening of June 

 2, 1874. Later that same season I started a female whose behavior afforded 

 convincing evidence that she had either eggs or young near at hand. She was 

 among dense oak scrub on a knoll not far from the willow-shaded causeway road. 

 Mr. Ralph Hoffmann assures me that Whip-poor-wills have long since ceased to 

 frequent Rock Meadow in summer, and he even doubts if they now breed any- 

 where within the limits of the Cambridge Region. My most recent summer 

 record is furnished by Mr. Walter Faxon who tells me that he heard a bird in 

 East Lexington on June 12, 1889. 



The Whip-poor-will occasionally appears in densely populated parts of Cam- 

 bridge during migration. On the evening of April 30, 1871, I heard a male in 

 full song in the grounds of the Gardiner G. Hubbard estate (now Hubbard Park), 



1 J. R. Lowell, My Garden Acquaintance, Atlantic Almanac for 1869, 1868, 37. 



