71 



WHIP-POOR-WILL. 



CAPRIMULGUS VOCIFESUS. 

 [Plate XLL— Fig. 1, Male, — Fig. 2, Female. — Fig. 3, Young.] 



Peale's Museum, No. 7721, male, 1122, female. 



THIS is a singular and very celebrated species, universally 

 noted over the greater part of the United States for the loud reite- 

 rations of his favorite call in spring; and yet personally he is but 

 little known, most people being unable to distinguish this from the 

 preceding species, when both are placed before them ; and some 

 insisting that they are the same. This being the case, it becomes 

 the duty of his historian to give a full and faithful delineation of his 

 character and peculiarity of manners, that his existence as a dis- 

 tinct and independent species may no longer be doubted, nor his 

 story mingled confusedly with that of another. I trust that those 

 best acquainted with him will bear witness to the fidelity of the 

 portrait. 



On or about the twenty-fifth of April, if the season be not un- 

 commonly cold, the Whip-poor-will is first heard in this part of 

 Pennsylvania, in the evening, as the dusk of twilight commences, 

 or in the morning as soon as dawn has broke. In the state of 

 Kentucky I first heard this bird on the fourteenth of April, near 

 the town of Danville. The notes of this solitary bird, from the 

 ideas which are naturally associated with them, seem like the voice 

 of an old friend, and are listened to by almost all with great inte- 

 rest. At first they issue from some retired part of the woods, the 

 glen or mountain; in a few evenings perhaps we hear them from 

 the adjoining coppice — the garden fence — the road before the door, 

 and even from the roof of the dwelling house, long after the family 



