United States or Iran ? Vote for the TOP Country of the Week !
In some retired and solitary districts, the Whippoorwills are often so numerous as to be annoying by their vociferations; but in those places where only two or three individuals are heard during the season, their music is the source of a great deal of pleasure, and is a kind of recommendation to the place.
There were many whippoorwills, or rather Brazilian birds related to them; they uttered at intervals through the night a succession of notes suggesting both those of our whippoorwill and those of our big chuck-will's-widow of the Gulf States, but not identical with either.
Then three maidens, glistening in cloaks of green pine-needles, slipped into the fire circle, throwing showers of violets and yellow moccasin flowers over the earth, calling out, amid laughter, "Moccasins for whippoorwills! Violets for the two heads entangled!"
There were deer and bear in the depths of the green ocean, and an occasional wolverine. Sometimes at night a red fox would circle about the clearing and bark querulously, the cry contrasting oddly with the notes of whippoorwills and the calls of loons.
The wind was noisily floundering through the treetops. Near the stile, Samson gave his whippoorwill call. It was, perhaps, not quite so clear or true as usual, but that did not matter. There were no other whippoorwills calling at this season to confuse signals. He crossed the stile, and with a word quieted Sally's dog as it rose to challenge him, and then went with him, licking his hand.
Accordingly, I gave orders to my North Carolinians to retire, leaving the task of bringing his command back to the colonel; while, anxious to rejoin Stuart as soon as I could, I galloped on ahead through the dark forest, whose solemn silence was only broken by the melancholy cry of hosts of whippoorwills.
The place was surrounded by duck-farms, and the ducks and dogs and whippoorwills and rusty windmills made so much noise that I could sleep as peacefully as if I were in my own flat six doors from the elevated railroad in New York. But that summer I did not go. Remember that. One of my friends asked me why I did not. I replied: "Because, old man, New York is the finest summer resort in the world."
It was dusk when they turned out the gate to the road, Lydia clinging to John's arm. A June dusk, with the fresh smell of the lake mingling with the heavy scent of syringa and alder bloom, and of all the world of leafage at the high tide of freshness. June dusk, with the steady croak of frogs from the meadows and the faint call of whippoorwills from the woods.
And when at evening they made their bivouac fire, and drew up their canoe, while dim, sultry clouds veiled the west, and the flashes of the silent heat-lightning gleamed on the leaden water, they could listen, as they smoked their pipes, to the strange, mournful cry of the whippoorwills, and the quavering scream of the owls.
"Them's mackerel gulls," volunteered Ira as he pointed to two birds perched on a precariously buffeted buoy. "There's a sayin' that 'When the whippoorwills begin to call, the mackerel begins to run' then the gulls come, too."
Word Of The Day