Of a Feather: Vanishing voice at dusk and dawn

By BILL CHAISSON
Of the many places I have lived, Sutton Mills has the most diverse birdlife right outside my window. In Brooklyn, I woke up to the relentless scolding of house sparrows and the more haunting cries of gulls. In Rochester, New York cardinals and robins welcomed the sun. In Unity, New Hampshire, there were song sparrows and blue jays. Rather ordinary neighborhood birds.

This spring has been unusually cold; we had the heat on for a couple of nights in early June, never mind May. But now that we are leaving the windows open every night, my day begins with a dawn chorus that unfolds like a work of classical music. The robins are first, uttering their softest melodies at a little after 4 a.m. Early on the Baltimore oriole doesn’t sing per se, but hops through the tree tops muttering snatches of its half-blackbird, half-pretty bird song. But what really impresses me is the three different warblers that I get to hear, which is a first for me. With my head still on the pillow I tally the yellow warbler, the yellowthroat, and the redstart.

One bird, however, I have heard only once, but was amazed. Our house sits just above the vast swamp that extends from Sutton Mills down to South Sutton along the Lane River. It is surrounded on most sides by wet woods and unmown meadow. One morning last week I was lying there half-asleep when I heard a whip-poor-will call its name twice. That was it; I didn’t hear it again that morning and haven’t heard it since.

I was introduced to this nocturnal bird up in Danbury, New Hampshire. Some friends of my mother’s had a farm at the foot of Forbes Mountain, and while she visited with them my 9-year-old self (and my 7-year-old brother) explored the boulder-strewn pastures that stretched between the barn and the woods. Back in the 1960s there were perhaps a dozen whip-poor-wills audible at the same time there.

Now that I live in New Hamsphire, I am tempted to drive up to Danbury at dusk some time to listen and see if, a half century later, the whip-poor-wills still call from the edge of the forest. I haven’t done it, in part because I don’t want to be made sad.

The whip-poor-will (Antrostomus vociferus) is one of the nightjars (family Caprimulgidae), all of which are nocturnal birds that hunt flying insects on the wing either by sallying out from a perch, like a flycatcher, or chasing them on the wing, like a swallow. Like both the swallows and swifts, nightjars have short bills and very wide mouths. Whip-poor-wills are able to swallow insects that are 2 inches across, and the larger chuck-wills-widow (A. carolinensis) even eats small birds and bats.

All nightjars are heavily camouflaged. Their plumage is a mottled mixture of gray, brown, and white. The brown in some individuals may tend toward rufous, but at rest these birds looks like a pile of leaves or a lump of lichen-covered bark. Usually seen in the air, they are very hard to spot when they are perched. In addition, like cuckoos, they are adept at holding quite still.

Their preferred habit is open deciduous or mixed woodland with a healthy understory and adjacent to open spaces. They need the forest to be open to chase insects without colliding with trunks and branches. Whip-poor-wills flap their wings very slowly and can turn 180 degrees between wing beats. They begin hunting at dusk and continue until it gets too dark to see. If there enough moonlight, they will feed all night long, stopping about 40 minutes before dawn.

Whip-poor-wills do not build a nest, but instead lay two eggs on the ground. The male defends the territory around the nest fiercely, often approaching intruders with its mouth agape and wings spread. The female will remain on the nest until nearly stepped on.

The behavior and ecology of the whip-poor-will has left it open to all sorts of misfortune. Its favored habitat has disappeared in the face of suburban sprawl. The understory plants it requires for cover have, in some regions, been literally eaten to the ground by overpopulated deer. The overuse of pesticides by both farmers and homeowners has greatly decreased the flying insect populations upon which whip-poor-wills feed. The enormous increase in the feral cat population has made it difficult for all ground-nesting birds to complete their reproductive cycles.

Finally, these are migratory birds, retreating from their breeding range in the southern Canada, northeastern U.S. and the Midwest to the Gulf coast, Mexico, and Central America in the winter. All migrating birds are at risk of colliding with buildings, especially with the trend toward erecting tall hotels and office towers clustered in the middle of nowhere along interstates and at the edge of agricultural land.

Between 1966 and 2014, the population of the whip-poor-will has declined 3% each year, for a cumulative decrease of 75%, according to the North American Breeding Bird Survey. In 2017, the species was moved from the category of “least concern” to “near threatened” on the IUCN Red List.

In 1994, the “Atlas of Breeding Birds of New Hampshire” detailed the situation in this state. Here the decline began in the 1950s or early ‘60s. The number of birds heard on the Breeding Bird Survey routes decreased from 13 birds on seven routes in 1969 to five birds heard on three routes in 1970 “and has remained very low to the present time.” In 1980, it was officially listed as “threatened” in New Hampshire.

Bill Chaisson, who has been a birdwatcher since age 11, is a former editor of the Eagle Times. He now works for the Town of Wilmot and lives in Sutton.