Just now, we were in the living room with a west window open and a south
window open when a whip-poor-will suddenly burst into song so loudly that
I'm guessing he may have been within twenty feet of our house. Soon a
chuck-will's-widow cut loose near the edge of the yard, and we could hear
its song coming in through the south window. We could hear its "chuck" even
with the noisy whip singing at the top of his voice.
Backing up to a highlight for me from yesterday morning, before daylight I
stood in a trail in one of the clearings in our woods listening to both the
whip-poor-wills and chuck-will-widows sing. A soft noise and perhaps a
little movement drew my attention down to the ground in front of me. I wish
I had not looked, because right there about three feet from my shoe sat a
whip-poor-will. He had just flown in and landed in the trail in front of me.
My movement to see him sent him flying. I'd have rather heard him from three
feet away than to just have seen him at that distance.
I say whip-poor-will, but all I could see of the bird in the moonlight when
it flew were the strong white margins of the tail. It could have been a
chuck-will-widow, I suppose, but the size of the bird seemed more consistent
with that of the smaller whip-poor-will. Also, the whip had been singing
closer to me than the chuck-will's-widow had been.
We've been hearing multiple birds of both species.
Kevin Shank
