After nightfall the air grew loud with the cries of batrachians and insects, an interesting and novel chorus. On my first evening at the hotel I was loitering up the road, with frequent auditory pauses, thinking how full the world is of unseen creatures which find their day only after the sun goes down, when in a woody spot I heard behind me a sound of footsteps. A woman was close at my heels, fetching a pail of water from the spring. I remarked upon the many voices. She answered pleasantly. It was the big frogs that I heard, she reckoned.
"Do you have whippoorwills here?" I asked.
"Plenty of 'em," she answered, "plenty of 'em."
"Do you hear them right along the road?"
"Yes, sir; oh yes."
We had gone hardly a rod further before we exclaimed in the same breath, "There is one now!"
I inquired if there was another bird here, something like the whippoorwill, meaning the chuck-will's-widow. But she said no; she knew of but one.
"How early does the whippoorwill get here?" said I.
"Pretty early," she answered.
"By the first of April, should you say?"