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When I started researching Whip-poor-wills, it didn't occur to me to organize my work by the light of the moon. But over the last few months, that's exactly what I've found myself doing. Many nightjars--and Whip-poor-wills, especially--are much more active around the time of a full moon. As for us humans, it's a whole lot easier to see them when the ground is lit by moonlight.
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A few days before the May full moon, I traveled to southern Missouri to listen for Whip-poor-wills and learn about some ongoing research of them in managed forests of the midwest. It was an incredible opportunity, which I owe to the generosity of three scientists at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign: T.J. Benson, Mike Ward, and Holly Coates. (For more on their work, see this 2023 Audubon magazine article.)
The trip opened with a few self-inflicted blunders. I broke my phone at DIA. My luggage broke in transit, exposing my camera and recording equipment to the world. I then turned the 3-hour drive from St. Louis to Coates' field site in southern Missouri into a 4.5-hour drive by somehow setting my map for a random corn field 90 minutes east of the site!
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The detour had at least one happy little accident: I passed Whippoorwill Lake campground, one of the many signs that Whip-poor-wills still had a presence in the region.
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As for the birds themselves, they made it easy to forget my clunky start. During my visit, Coates and her field crew caught, measured, radio-tagged, and banded four Whip-poor-wills. Seeing the birds up close, I was struck by how small they are and how still they hold while in the hand of a researcher.
Their songs came from everywhere, too. Almost, quite literally...everywhere. I've written about how difficult they are to find today in the Hudson Valley Region of NY where I grew up. In this part of southern Missouri, you couldn't avoid them. It seemed every little stand of trees or shrubs along every road or bordering every field offered the song of a Whip-poor-will or two. I heard more Whip-poor-wills in the hour after my first sunset there than I had in my 40 (or so...) years prior. I got some pretty clear recordings, too, which I posted back in May.
Just before sunset, on the night of the full moon, a Whip-poor-will came out early enough for me to watch him through my binoculars. This was an incredibly lucky encounter. I'd seen a few Whip-poor-wills along the road--and the silhouettes of one or two in flight. But this one sat out in the open, on a bare pine branch. He stretched his body, holding his tail low and his head extended. And he sang! He occasionally paused the song to fly up through the tree, presumably to hunt. It didn't last long, though. The call of several other Whip-poor-wills drew him to the roadside, where he sang ever more vigorously.
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The next morning, my last at the site, brought something as amazing: I watched an apparent pair of Whip-poor-wills interact out in the open. The two gathered on a concrete pad beneath a picnic bench. I watched their silhouette and eyeshine in the red light of my headlamp. One bobbed its head before the other, moving close. The rising sun drew them back to the woods, though. I heard a few last calls of "Whip-poor-will" before the nightjars put their songs to bed and songbirds woke their own.
Other highlights of the trip: Luna Moths, the first I'd seen since childhood; blooming Purple Milkweed, whose population is struggling in the northeast; so...many... butterflies; and an Armadillo or two!
A couple of photos from the trip are at the end of the newsletter...so read on!
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Back in Colorado for the June full moon: Geoff Stacks and I spent time among scrub oak-lined paths to listen for Common Poorwills. Poorwills are quite like Whip-poor-wills--except poorwills are a bit smaller, sing a briefer song, and use more open habitat than Whip-poor-wills. And Colorado's little nightjars didn't disappoint. They sang and hunted right on the trail with us.
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The Moon's Still Nearly Full!
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We're just past the July full moon, which was on Sunday. Now's a good time to seek nightjars. It may be your last best chance to hear them this summer, as they tend to get quieter as summer progresses.
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All Nightjars have Superpowers...
and for Whip-poor-wills, I think their superpower is their ability to sync with the moon. They sing more vigorously and hunt more actively under a full or nearly full moon. There's also evidence they can time both the hatching of their eggs and their subsequent autumn migrations to the moon cycle.
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As for Colorado's Common Poorwills, they are a singular bird species in their ability to handle both cold and extreme heat. Common Poorwills are the only species of bird known to enter prolonged states of torpor to endure freezing temperatures; this is a state similar to hibernation among mammals. Good thing, too. Here in Colorado, poorwills' arrival in late-April are always followed by frosts, dustings of snow, and the occasional tree-crushing blizzard. But poorwills are also at home in the extreme heat, having the most efficient a/c systems in the bird kingdom, panting away their body heat to endure southwest U.S. and northern Mexico summers.
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Photo above: Common Poorwill at Denver Botanic Gardens (2015)
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What I'm Listening To
My essay for Audubon has a Spotify playlist of Whip-poor-will themed country songs. My own Whip-poor-will playlist is a little different. Listen to it here.
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What I'm Reading
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One of my new favorite poems mentioning Whip-poor-wills is Carl Sandburg's 1920 poem, "Timber Wings." I think the main avian character in the poem is the then-already-extinct Passenger Pigeon, who comes to Sandberg with a message about Whip-poor-wills (and much more). Since it's public domain, I've posted it to my blog. You can read this lovely poem here.
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Upcoming Talks
I have a few talks scheduled for early 2025. They'll be free and open to the public. Look for more info in my fall and winter newsletters.
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And if you work with an organization, group, or department who might enjoy learning more about nightjars and human culture, drop me an email at jared@lonesomewhippoorwill.com! I'm always happy to share my work with others!
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A Few Photos
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Whip-poor-will Decoy (Fabricated by T.J. Benson and painted by Holly Coates)
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Butterflies! (A patch of many...)
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"To sleep where you may hear the whip-poor-will in your dreams!" - Henry David Thoreau, 1851
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lonesomewhippoorwill.com
jared@lonesomewhippoorwill.com
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