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There seemed to be a great owl hooting from every hollow tree, and a little one screeching from every knothole. The bellowing of big bullfrogs was not sufficiently deafening to shut out the wailing of whip-poor-wills that seemed to come from every bush. Nighthawks swept past him with their shivering cry, and bats struck his face. A prowling wildcat missed its catch and screamed with rage.
Upon its wooded summit, with no sound to break in upon us save the screaming of whip-poor-wills, which the boys with ready augury construed to mean "whip-'em-well," and picket firing, that would occasionally appear to run along the line, we passed a comfortable night.
I want a yard with a fence around it that you can go out and set on after supper and listen to whip-poor-wills. I'm a fool about whip-poor-wills, says Luke. "That's the kind of a man he was. He was home-like, although he'd had bad luck in such investments. But he never talked about them times on the ranch. It seemed like he'd forgotten about it.
The crotch in the tree, where the robin had plastered her nest, modeling the mud with her feathered breast; the brook-edge willows, where the blackbirds built; the meadow, with its hidden homes of bobolinks; and the woods where the whip-poor-wills called o' nights.
They visit the same blooms, and vary but little in size. The distinction that must have made the difference was that while Lineata kept company with the hummingbirds and fed all day, Celeus came forth at dusk, and flew in the evening and at night. But that did not conclusively prove it a moth, for nighthawks and whip-poor-wills did the same; yet unquestionably they were birds.
"All right, Harry," replied Wallace. After the young fellow had crawled into the sleeping bag which his guide had spread for him over a fragrant layer of hemlock and balsam, Thorpe and his companion smoked one more pipe. The whip-poor-wills called back and forth across the river.
And in the trees there were owls, and in the bushes there were whip-poor-wills, and sometimes a mockingbird, but no other kinds of birds, and at night the fireflies were all about. And outside the pine trees, all around the house, the tobacco grew and grew. It grew so broad and high that the children might have played I-spy in it, only there weren't any children.
As it grew dark, and the voices of the whip-poor-wills succeeded the whistle of the quails, we removed our saddles to the tent, to serve as pillows, spread our blankets upon the ground, and prepared to bivouac for the first time that season. Each man selected the place in the tent which he was to occupy for the journey.
There was no wind; the cataracts of wild grape descending from the tops of the tallest trees stirred not a leaf; the pines were soundless. But the whip-poor-wills wailed on, and once a catamount screamed, and the deer, coming to a lick close by, made a trampling over the fern.
Whitman, who has much to say about "bob-a-links" and "whip-poor-wills," and some other fowl which sing "when lilacs bloom in the garden yard," has neglected, we fear, the wild turkey, simply because the Muse has not given this bird melody, and made it, like the robin-redbreast, which goes so well with bread-crumbs, "an amiable songster."
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