Eastern Whip-poor-will - Ross Feldner Eastern Whip-poor-wills are renowned in literature, poetry and folk song for their repetitive song. A member of the Nightjar family, they are easy to hear but their perfect camouflage makes them very hard to see. Their plumage is a perfect match for the forest floor and leaf litter where they roost and breed. Whip-poor-wills feed on insects that they vacuum up with their large mouths. It’s believed that they locate insects by seeing their silhouettes against the sky using eyes that have a reflective structure behind the retina that is suited to low light conditions. Sadly this iconic bird is becoming locally rare. Reasons for the decline are loss of early successional forest habitat, habitat destruction, predation by feral cats and dogs, and poisoning by insecticides. There are so many cultural references to this bird it would hard to list them all here but they include authors James Thurber, Washington Irving, William Faulkner, and the poet Emily Dickinson, as well as musicians Hank Williams and Elton John. Henry David Thoreau wrote, "The note of the whip-poor-will borne over the fields is the voice with which the moon and moonlight woo me." | |
