The Whip - poor - will 
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will, but, like it, is nocturnal in its habits. So closely do the two birds 
resemble each other, both in physical structure and in habits, that 
naturalists tell us they are near relatives, and, in fact, they classify them 
as belonging to the same family. Many of the people who live in the 
forests where these birds are found do not know much about the scientific 
study of birds, and usually believe that these two night-prowlers are one 
and the same birds. They will tell you that the Chuck-wiirs-widow is 
the male Whip-poor-will. 
Dowm in the lake country of central Florida, as a boy, I used to listen 
to the Chuck-will’s-widow calling on summer nights. When the winter 
months came, however, the cries that came up from the deep woods of 
an evening were different, for at that season these birds were all gone, 
and their places taken by Whip-poor-wills which had arrived from the 
more northern States to pass the winter where the snows never fall, and 
frosts seldom come. 
Another closely related bird is often confused in the public mind with 
the Whip-poor-will. This is the Nighthawk, or ‘‘Bull-bat.” Very many 
persons think there is no difference in these birds, but there is a marked 
difference, both in appearance and habits. The Night- 
hawk’s wings are much longer, and, when folded, 
reach well beyond the end of the tail, while the Whip- 
poor-will's wings do not extend even as far as the end of the tail. The 
Nighthawk flies about in the early evening, long before sunset, and may 
sometimes be seen, even at noontime, hawking about for insects. It often 
feeds hundreds of feet in the air, and may remain on the wdng for an hour 
or more at a time. On the other hand, its cousin of the shadows comes 
out of its seclusion so late in the evening only, that it is difficult to see it, 
and it captures its food by short flights near the ground. 
The Whip-poor-will, and the other two birds I have mentioned, 
belong to the family of birds called Goatsuckers. They have very weak 
feet and legs, and so move very slowly and feebly when on the ground. 
They sit lengthwise on a limb, fence-rail, or other object on which the}' 
chance to perch, and very rarely use the crosswise position so commonly 
adapted by the perching birds. The mouth in this group is one of the 
wonders of the bird-world because of its enormous size. All around the 
upper lip is arranged a series of long, stiff, curving hairs, which form a 
sort of broad scoop-net in which the bird entangles and seizes its insect- 
prey, for it always feeds while on the wing, and the agile gnats and 
moths might often be able to dodge or slip out of the very small beak 
possessed by these birds were it not for the wide fringe of bristles. 
Few birds are more valuable to the farmer than is the Whip-poor-will. 
It never does him any harm in any way, for it does not eat his cherries 
and strawberries, nor does it pull up his newly planted corn, nor eat his 
millet seed. It does not fill up the drainage-pipes of his house with sticks 
and leaves as do the Wrens ; it does not eat his chicken-feed as do the 
pestiferous European Sparrows, nor catch his young poultry . What it 
does for him is to eat the ever-swarming insects that lay the eggs that 
