Like the Chuck-will’s Widow, this species removes its eggs, and also its young, to a distant and safer locality, if they are visited and handled. Wilson once, in passing through a piece of wood, came accidentally upon a young bird of this species. The parent attempted to draw him away by well-feigned stratagems. Wilson stopped and sketched the bird, and, returning again, after a short absence, to the same place, in search of a pencil he had left behind, found that the bird had been spirited away by its vigilant parent.
When disturbed by an intrusive approach, the Whippoorwill resorts to various expedients to divert attention to herself from her offspring. She flutters about as if wounded and unable to fly, beats the ground with her wings as if not able to rise from it, and enacts these feints in a manner to deceive even the most wary, risking her own life to save her offspring.
The Whippoorwills construct no nest, but deposit their eggs in the thickest and most shady portions of the woods, among fallen leaves, in hollows slightly excavated for that purpose, or upon the leaves themselves. For this purpose elevated and dry places are always selected, often near some
fallen log. There they deposit two eggs, elliptical in shape. Their young, when first hatched, are perfectly helpless, and their safety largely depends upon their great similarity to small pieces of mouldy earth. They grow rapidly, and are soon able to follow their mother and to partially care for themselves.
The egg of the Whippoorwill has a strong family resemblance to those of both species of European Caprimulgi, and is a complete miniature of that of A. carolinensis. In shape it is oblong and oval, equally obtuse at either end. Resembling the egg of the Chuck-will’s Widow, it is yet more noticeable for the purity of its colors and the beauty of their contrast. The ground-color is a clear and pure shade of cream-white. The whole egg is irregularly spotted and marbled with lines and patches of purplish-lavender, mingled with reddish-brown. The former are fainter, and as if partially obscured, the brown usually much more distinct. The eggs measure 1.25 inches in length by .88 of an inch in breadth. Wilson’s account of its egg is wholly inaccurate.
In the extreme Southern States these eggs are deposited in April, in Virginia and Pennsylvania about the middle of May, and farther north not until early in June. The young are hatched and able to care for themselves during July, but, with the female, rarely leave the woods. The notes of the male are once more occasionally heard in August. Mr. Allen has heard them late in September, but I have never happened to notice their cries later than August.
Mr. Nuttall states that the young of these birds, at an early age, run about with remarkable celerity, and that they utter, at short intervals a pé-ūgh, in a low mournful tone. Their food appears to consist of various kinds of nocturnal insects, besides ants, grasshoppers, and other kinds not nocturnal, frequenting decaying wood and shady thickets.
Left foot of Antrostomus vociferus.
