354 
Forest and Stream 
THE WHIP-POOR-WILL 
Dear Forest and Stream : 
'^HE whip-poor-will is described in 
our catalogues of birds as having a 
wide range — from the Atlantic to the 
Rockies, and from the Gulf to Canada. 
However, one can spend many years in 
one locality without seeing or hearing 
the least sign of this bird. Sometimes, 
toward dusk, its sharp, clear note can 
be heard, but in broad daylight it sleeps 
among the deepest and coolest parts of 
the woods, and rarely is its note heard 
before twilight. There are only three 
places where I have heard whip-poor- 
wills in large number, and in one of these 
places I was privileged to get a good 
view of our modest friend. The first 
place was in southwestern Ohio, where 
I lived many years. I had never seen 
nor heard a whip-poor-will in this local- 
ity before the spring of 1912. 
One evening at about twilight I heard 
the low note of one of them, the sound 
coming from a nearby thicket whither I 
at once set out to make my acquaintance 
with this sly little bird, having before this 
time only read about him. But my jour- 
ney was without success; on later eve- 
nings a whip-poor-will was to be heard 
and never seen. Next year several whip- 
poor-wills stopped for a few weeks, but 
all were too shy to allow me to get a 
glimpse of them. At the slight -snapping 
of a twig all would be quiet, and a slight 
shuffling of leaves would follow, telling 
me that they were to discontinue their 
concert until I went away. 
Some years later, in the spring of 1918, 
on an army reservation in central In- 
diana, one evening at about ten o’clock, 
there began a merry chorus of nocturnal 
voices which I at once recognized as a 
chorus of whip-poor-wills. I had been 
living on the reservation some weeks, 
but I had never seen nor heard the 
slightest sign of the bird, so evidently 
a whole flock had lately arrived. On 
each succeeding evening, at about ten 
o’clock, they would begin their concert, 
continuing for about two hours. I never 
tried to observe them, for their chorus 
seemed too worthy to be disturbed. This 
continued for a month at least, then one 
evening all was quiet, nor did I hear 
them thereafter. 
I made no more observations upon the 
habits of the whip-poor-will until the 
summer of 1920. I was walking with 
a couple of French-Canadian guides 
through a very wild part of Quebec 
through which region a forest fire had 
passed some five or ten years before. It 
was just about sunset when I heard di- 
rectly before me the low, sweet note of 
a whip-poor-will. There, directly in 
front of us, he sat on a dead limb, not 
at all frightened at our approach. The 
French-Canadians were in for killing 
hirn at once, so both threw their caps 
which missed him by only a few inches. 
Not knowing what to make of such pro- 
cedure he flew only a short distance and 
perched upon another dead limb, his 
brownish-gray body almost blending with 
the gray bark. Again the French-Canadi- 
ans threw their hats, but not being struck, 
he flew some twenty or thirty feet beyond. 
A third time the guides tried to deprive 
the innocent creature of its life. This 
time the bird flew several hundred feet 
and was safe from the hands of his 
enemies. I saw him perch on a low 
tree and soon the soft “whip-poor-will” 
told me that all was well. 
This bird seemed to be different 
than those of my former experience. 
He seemed quite tame and unaccus- 
tomed to enemies. I do not know 
whether it was because he was bewil- 
dered by being so suddenly disturbed or 
whether he had seen no enemy in this 
desolate place for so long that his in- 
stinct of flight had actually become dor- 
mant, but I am much inclined to the 
latter view because on a very few oc- 
casions afterwards the same thing oc- 
curred, to a less appreciable degree, how- 
ever. I never had opportunity to make 
an accurate study or observation in this 
region except on these few occasions, 
but I believe valuable knowledge could 
be gained about the habits of the whip- 
poor-will and about birds in general and 
especially knowledge in regard to their 
instincts, for in this sparsely-settled re- 
gion they have for many ages perhaps 
been unaccustomed to enemies other 
than snakes and owls. 
Earl L. Heck 
THE NYMPH ON ENGLISH 
STREAMS 
Dear Forest and Stream : 
T HAVE just received word from an 
^ eminent British angler which says, in 
part : “The great feature to-day of fly- 
fishing for trout in England is the hark- 
back to sunk flies. The nymphs are be- 
ing studied and copied more closely than 
before, and fished upstream over indi- 
vidual fish. They are killing well. In 
one club I belong to, the famous Duffield 
Beck, which is a typical chalk stream, 
the man who kills most fish, never puts 
on a dry-fly at all. It is the same on 
the ‘Test’ and ‘Itchen,’ and, indeed, it 
is only natural. If you examine a 
trout’s stomach you will find — 10, 20 or 
30 nymphs for every winged fly.” 
The quotation describes exactly my 
own experience in fishing the last few 
days in June. Many letters of approval 
have come to me regarding the new 
humpback nymphs I copied from life and 
described in the May number of Forest 
AND Stream. One angler captured fifty 
trout in succession on the black numph, 
fished wet and sunk. It is for me a per- 
sonal satisfaction to find a distinguished 
author and angler describing what I ad- 
vised early this spring, that is, to study 
and practice nymph fishing both early 
and late in the season. 
Louis Rhead, New York. 
ARE BADGERS CANNIBALS? 
Dear Forest and Stream : 
'T'HE writer once kept a badger in 
-*■ captivity and found that he was par- 
ticularly fond of bread and milk, but his 
gastronomic tastes were equally excited 
by the contents of the pig pail, which 
varied in its contents from scraps of 
porridge to the drumsticks of chicken; 
in fact, it appeared that there was noth- 
ing which either human being or pig 
would eat that a badger would not. 
Flowever, it was not till many years 
later that I had the opportunity of watch- 
ing a badger in his wild, natural sur- 
roundings showing appetite for the de- 
ceased of his own kind. 
Early in November, in southern Al- 
berta, at an altitude of three thousand 
five hundred feet, when the ground was 
frozen to the depth- of a few inches, but 
as yet there was no snow, I rode up to 
a homesteader’s cabin to inquire the 
way. It did not boast of any flower gar- 
den or attempt at artificial beauty, but 
the prairie grass grew right up to the 
doorstep. Within ten feet of the shack 
I saw a badger hole with fresh earth 
scratched out of it, and about four feet 
from the hole was the carcass of a 
badger which had been skinned. Dis-- 
mounting and hitching my horse to a 
corral fence, I walked around the cabin 
to the back door, but finding it locked 
on the outside I went back towards my 
horse. The quick movement of an ani- 
mal at the mouth of the badger hole 
caught my attention. My curiosity was 
aroused, but I had not seen enough to 
satisfy me. 
Going back behind the shack, I hid 
and waited. It appeared that the carcass 
was nearer the hole than when I first 
saw it. In two or three minutes a full- 
grown badger came out of the hole, and 
seizing the carcass by the back of the 
neck started to drag it down. It was 
frozen hard and got across the hole, so 
the badger could get it no further. This 
