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. Its silent, 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 — mj^sterious, vague, and in- 

 auspicious. Yet, for all its ghastly Sittings at 

 twilight and midnight, motley coloring, awk- 

 ward form, and inexpressible mouth, I believe 

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