|
|
Right now, I'm keeping my newsletter seasonal; you can expect just two more this year -- one in the fall and one in the winter. But this follow-up to my summer newsletter was too good not to share with you.
|
Just a day or two after writing you about Whip-poor-wills' relationship to the full moon, I received an email from Holly Coates, whose field sites I visited in Missouri. Holly and her crew had been keeping an eye on a Whip-poor-will nest at one of their sites. During a recent visit, they found two Whip-poor-will chicks who had recently hatched!
|
Both chicks were just a few days old and likely born as the moon edged toward fullness. Ornithologists have evidence that Whip-poor-wills actually time their reproduction to make this happen. The idea is that a night sky lit by a full or nearly full moon makes hunting flying insects easier. This helps the dutiful Whip-poor-wills parents feed their young, hungry chicks.
|
|
Holly was kind enough to share photos and to let me share them with you! So here's one of those photos. You can view the rest on her eBird checklist.
|
|
|
Whip-poor-will chicks are semi-precocial. They hatch with down feathering, not unlike the chicks of backyard hens. And they can move around. At roughly 10 days old, they're bold enough to try to scare off intruders by hissing and lunging at the threat. Their parents feed them, though, at this young age.
If you missed yesterday's newsletter, you can read it here. You can read more about the work Coates and others at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign are doing with Whip-poor-wills here.
|
|
|
|
|
|
"To sleep where you may hear the whip-poor-will in your dreams!" - Henry David Thoreau, 1851
|
lonesomewhippoorwill.com
jared@lonesomewhippoorwill.com
|
|
|
|
|