Wandering Whippoorwill

I have written before about my experiences with the whippoorwill. For those unfamiliar with this bird, it is North America's version of what are dubbed nightjars or goatsuckers. Few birds have been given a more colorful or intriguing name. They are a nocturnal, insectivorous bird that can be confused with owls, as they are cryptically colored, active at night, and fly silently.

I have come to appreciate the whippoorwill because of its voracious appetite for insects—particularly pesky mosquitoes. Years ago I was irritated by its incessant call, until I learned about all the insects it eats. Now it's my buddy.

The whippoorwill's name is onomatopoeic, which is a cumbersome word that means the name originates from the sound the bird makes. Another familiar example is the cuckoo. To hear the whippoorwill's call is a unique experience.

We have a few resident whippoorwills in our little woodland enclave. I used to think we had many more of them, until I realized that a single bird will wander from place to place in the dark in its designated territory, bursting forth in its onomatopoeic song for several minutes, and then will fly to another location and sing out again. It is active all night long.

I was spending the night recently in my meditation hut—all windows open to the fresh night air—as I followed one whippoorwill around in my mind's eye, by its call. I first heard him off in the woods, then up on the ridge, then down by the creek—leaving me wondering how he could satisfy his evening's appetite for mosquitoes, when he spent so much time singing.

Then I heard him nearby, only about a hundred feet away—up on the slope. Loud! He seemed to be getting closer. A near full moon illuminated the area, and I happened to be staring at the stars through the overhead skylight, when the dark silhouette of a bird flew across my field of vision, right across the window. An owl? No, it was our resident nightjar.

He landed behind my hut and commenced once again to sing out. He was very close. His song was loud. In fact, he was close enough that I could hear him gulp for air, between his calls. I believe that, on breathing in, the bird enunciates the two syllables “whip-poor” and then with gusto blasts out “will” on its out-breath. I'm not sure about that, but its call can be repeated a few dozen times with no break for air, so it must be singing on both its in-breath and out-breath. It's only on the turnaround—from in-breath to out-breath—that you can hear his gulping sound, and then only when he's close by.

Shortly he completed his song from just outside my hut, then silently flew off. In a minute I heard him calling again from several hundred feet away in the woods. His nighttime wanderings continued for another few hours. I drifted off to sleep.

Whippoorwill Wrangle

As I sat in the outdoor tub recently, I heard two whippoorwills who seemed to be vying with each other—at least that's how it sounded to me. Conversations and competitions between animals can get quite complex. We humans—with our complex languages and our big brains—tend to belittle the forms of communication we hear going on in the animal world. Caught within the narrow confines of our own kind of information transfer, we are apt to look upon animal communication as primitive and simplistic. We miss the subtle details of how they talk to each other.

So I sat there in the tub, tuning into the dialog that these two birds seemed to be having with each other. The whippoorwill's call is an onomatopoeic one—meaning that their song is essentially identical to their name. These birds sing out—not with the usual “tweet tweet”—but with a robust “WHIP-poor-WILL.” The first two syllables seem to be emitted on the inhale of breath, with the last strong syllable exhaled with gusto. Because the bird calls out on both inhale and exhale, he can go on and on, uninterrupted. And sometimes whippoorwills do—much to my chagrin. They can repeatedly call out through the night, drilling their calls deeply into one's ear and brain.

The two birds I was listening to this night would each sequentially sing out a dozen or so phrases and then fall silent, as if waiting and listening to the other bird, to see what the response was. They called back and forth several times, before they both paused for a while, as the forest silence once again returned. In a few minutes their call-and-response routine would begin afresh—with now one of them having shifted to a new location in the forest.

There obviously was some kind of communication going on. I became absorbed in their game—trying to fathom what the rules were. It was rather like traveling to a foreign country, where I was ignorant of both the language and customs, and was observing a dialog between people and trying to guess what they were talking about.

Was I listening to a whippoorwill contest? If so, were they contesting territory? This late in the season, they were unlikely to be seeking mates—the broods of all of our local birds had already been fledged, so there was no need to vie for a mate. Well, maybe they weren't competing for territory; maybe it was simply to see which one had the more appealing and accomplished call. Or maybe they were discussing some aspect of forest life... such as the lack of mosquitoes to eat tonight.

So, if it was a territorial contest, I wondered which bird might be the challenger and which one the defender. One bird's pitch was a little lower than the other's. Does pitch convey information? Does the more aggressive bird sing at a lower pitch? I also tried to guess which bird's call seemed to be more eloquent than the other. Would the challenger or the defender sound more impressive and resolute? I know that birds often try to bluff each other, and maybe a kind of deceit was going on.

When, after a pause, one changed position, I tried to guess if he was yielding and backing off, or maybe losing interest in the game and simply moving on. On the other hand, birds will sometimes alter the quality of their call—in order to signal that they are possibly acquiescing, when actually they seek to deceive the other into believing they are closer and more intimidating that they really are. It's part of the game.

As in most cases when I am treated to the calls and exhibitions of our wildlife, I am left wondering—with more questions than answers. Their sophisticated communication is yet beyond my comprehension. I've reposed in the tub for a couple of decades now, eavesdropping on their conversations. Bit by bit, I sometimes begin to understand what they are up to. Maybe in another half century—when I am a hundredtwentysomething—I may get it.

Noisy Night Jar

Sometime in mid-April we will hear our first whippoorwill call out into the night air. They have arrived in the northern Shenandoah Valley from Florida or Central America and are getting ready to gobble up countless insects and beget their next generation of chicks. No bird is quite as emphatic and clamorous as the whippoorwill. They begin to call, as deepening dusk settles over the area—the first calls of the season being primarily from the males, showing off their vocal skills to all available females within aural range.

The whippoorwill's scientific name—Caprimulgus vociferus—aptly captures this bird's insistent song. It is in the night jar family and is an onomatopoetic name—meaning that its call has essentially the same sound as its name: whip-poor-WILL. (Although I think a closer rendition of our local bird’s accent is something more like per-for-REAL. If you’ve ever heard one of these birds, try singing out these alternative renditions in a falsetto and see which seems closer… just be sure you are alone, or accompanied by congenial people.) 

One of these guys will begin to call out, and quickly seems to get seized by an urge to keep going, without pause, until he threatens to bring on himself a serious case of laryngitis. In fact, one intrepid ornithological accountant once recorded a performance of 1,088 continuous calls!

Recently sitting in the tub, as nightfall came on, I could make out three whippoorwills simultaneously calling—trying to outdo each other in the vociferousness department. As they repeatedly called, I wondered how they could be aware of their competitors presence. If you don't shut up and listen now and then, how can you know that you have rivals in the vicinity?

Because of its nocturnal habits, there is a lot of mystery about the behavior of the whippoorwill. Its coloring is cleverly cryptic. In the daytime they rest on the ground, so well camouflaged that you could step on one and not see it. In the dark they become really hard to spot. In fact, here's a cute bit of whippoorwill lore: while you might catch sight of a gaggle of geese, you'd more properly refer to it as an “invisibility” of whippoorwills.

So a whippoorwill is far more often heard than seen. Although I may hear a whippoorwill call anytime during the night, they are most active at dusk and just before dawn. Their gut has an amazing capacity—they can consume up to 2,000 small insects in one night! The female whippoorwill lays two eggs, which are timed to hatch as the moon is waxing. (Can they really read a moon almanac?) That way, the parents can see bugs all night, to catch and feed their ravenous youngsters. Or maybe they need the bright moonlight to see their own cryptically-colored chicks in the dark?

I sat there soaking, listening to the three insistent whippoorwills call—seemingly ignorant of each other. At least that's how it seemed to me. Their repetition rate varied all over the place, so they sounded like three tin-eared musicians, oblivious to the fact that their calls were both out of sync and out of tune with each other. It was a lousy trio! They lack the harmonizing skills of katydids that I'll be hearing in another couple of months, when a dozen or more of them will call out and gradually get in sync with each other, until the woods literally throb with the pulse of their calls.