Since summer arrives this month, I am writing about something which happened one summer when I was around 6 or 7 years old (1957 or 1958).
Wikipedia (before that, Compton’s, World Book, Britannica, etc.), says that the whip-poor-will is a nocturnal country bird which lives in a dry-deciduous or evergreen-deciduous forest that is without underbrush and is close to open areas. “Forest, close to open areas” describes my boyhood back yard. Actually, “forest” alone almost totally describes that backyard, as the number of oaks and elms there was not much less than that of the “forest proper.”
Late, on-an-almost-seven-decades-ago night, when all the other birds were asleep, my mother pointed out to my ears (a paradox) the sound of a solitary whip-poor-will coming from somewhere in the woods behind our backyard. She called me over to a darkened, open window at the rear of the house and bid me patiently listen.
The window was dark, first of all, because it was late at night, and second, because my mother had switched off the light in the room. My parents had lived through World War II and had experienced blackouts, even in the U.S.; but my mother’s action of switching off this light wasn’t done to ward off harm, but to serve as a sort of invitation for the little bird to sing its night song.
After a moment of silence, I heard that onomatopoeic sound: WHIP-POOR-WILL! (well, it wasn’t that loud; instead, more lower-case: “whip-poor-will!”).
The whip-poor-will song arrived at intervals from different places in the forest; and although I could sort of estimate the sound’s return, it still startled me upon arrival.
The whip-poor-will is highly camouflaged to its environment. In fact, sitting on a tree limb, it so matches the lichen-covered tree bark as to give the appearance of a part of the limb which has puffed out to become a viral gall! Being virtually invisible in both day and night, when the whip-poor-will sings, it’s almost as if the forest, itself is singing.
Despite much repetition, the little bird’s song seemed wonderfully fresh! Sometimes, it faded almost to inaudibility, like the decrescendo and pianissimo markings in music, depending on the varying distances of the little bird’s forest night flights in search of insects.
The whip-poor-will’s nocturnal, multi-directional darting seems to imitate the “scurrying about” which we do in the 9-to-5 day-lit portion of our lives.
The old house, with backyard and forest, is still there; although, the present forest is a new one. About a dozen years ago, the old growth was logged; but because the logging company planted fast-growing pine, a goodly portion of the old forest’s height has been regained.
I wonder how many successive generations of whip-poor-wills have come and gone in that place where the solitary whip-poor-will announce its presence to my mother and me on that late, late 1950s evening? I guess I’ll never know.
But whatever the number of whip-poor-wills having lived there since maybe, the number of souls who listened at that window, on that evening, at that specific time to hear the whip-poor-will’s call will forever, never equal more than two.
