I Know When the Night Bird Sings



Buddy, If I Can't Sleep, You Can't Sleep!

Country living has many charms. Among them is the evening chorus of frogs, crickets, owls and coyotes. Nothing like falling asleep with the window open on a cool spring or summer night to a symphony of natural sounds.

One woodland creature that would be voted off “Nature's Got Talent” the very first week would be the small bird known as the whippoorwill. Known by the very appropriate scientific name of "Antrostomus vociferus", ounce for ounce this tiny bird can generate a song loud enough to wake the dead. Or at least those that are dead asleep. Though it’s call is seen as romantic and wistful to some, even to me as long as it occurs at dusk and at a distance, a whippoorwill immediately outside your window at 2 AM is a bird of a different feather.

Singing with a volume and a frenetic urgency that belies its small size, the whippoorwill must be 98% lungs. The other night I awoke to the song, and I use that word lightly, of the whippoorwill. I counted 52 straight extremely loud and shrill WHIPPOORWILL’S without a single pause. Then it caught its breath and let go 31 more loud WHIPPOORWILL’S just for good measure.

James Thurber once wrote a short story he named Whip-poor-will. The main character, Mr. Kinstrey, suffers from sleep deprivation due to the constant nighttime singing of a whippoorwill. Finally, at wit’s end, he kills his family and himself. At the end of the story, the policeman investigating the murders speculated:
"... takes a more’n a whip-poor-will to cause a mess like that?"

According to the website www.birdwatching.com, “a Whip-poor-will easily performs 1000 renditions without a pause.”

Mr. Kinstrey: I don’t approve, but I sort of understand.

If you don’t understand, listen to the following youtube video at full volume for an hour straight and get back with me.
　
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JXwoHqjO3lA&feature=fvwrel