June 13th and 16th 2016 Lion’s head, Bruce Co. Ontario. Our daily excursions exploring the beautiful greenness of the Bruce Peninsula deliver such a richness of birds, flowers and ferns that it is hard to focus on any one as the day’s highlight. Easier perhaps to turn instead to the night, although in truth we scarcely see the nights. We are usually so drained that we’re long ago in bed while some lingering bands of light remain in the north-western sky. But on a couple of evenings as dusk closed in we ventured out to listen for whip-poor-wills, and succeeded every time.
Whip-poor-wills are birds of dry mixed forests. Your chances of coming across one are slim to none; you’d have to be traipsing cross-country and off-trail to happen upon one. They hug the forest floor, cryptically coloured like leaf litter, either whiling away the day or incubating eggs, they are virtually invisible. It’s hard to know what goes through the mind of a Whip-poor-will but based on the scant evidence I have, the bird sits quietly through the daylight hours waiting patiently for the light to fade, waiting for some unknowable trigger event: whether it’s light levels, the appearance of certain moth species, or even Sirius the Dog Star’s ascendency over the treetops is beyond me.
Whip-poor-wills are very vocal and call their far-reaching namesake song endlessly. There is no better approximation of their song than WHIP–pu–Whill delivered with an assertive start and a slight whistling emphasis on the last syllable. On a couple of late evening outings we could hear Whip-poor-wills calling from several points near and far and sometimes overlapping. Whip-poor-wills are most active at dusk, dawn and on full moon nights. I’ve heard of campers and country residents driven to hair-pulling, scream-inducing rage by the monotony of a nearby Whip-poor-will’s call uttered without pause from all moonlit night long, I can see how it would wear you down, but then, Whip-poor-wills were here first.
