Wednesday, April 12, 2006

Whip-poor-will Moon

Wednesday, April 12, 2006
5 comments

Unbelievable! Julie just walked past me, headed out to shut her greenhouse door. She left my sliding door open and the next thing we heard sent us into leaping into an impromptu dance across the lawn. A whip-poor-will called about 10 times from our orchard! This seems very early to me, but I'll have to check our nature notes (yep, normal arrival date according to Zick is 4/21. That's 10 days early.). He JUST got in tonight, like five minutes ago.

Whips nest here on our farm, but their spring appearance is usually timed to coincide with the emergence of the larger moths--the whips' main food. Here's hoping we don't have any late snow or freezing rain in the next few weeks. Nothing but happy goatsucker weather from here onward.

Wow! Sleeping with the windows open tonight....

5 comments:

On April 12, 2006 at 9:27 PM Anonymous said...

Love being able to sleep with the windows open again. Last night my daughter and I sat in the dark and listened to our local great horned owl family having a lengthy chat about something. They went on back and forth conversing for nearly 15 minutes...very cool for an owl nut like my 13 year old kiddo.
Caroline Stafford

On April 12, 2006 at 10:38 PM Anonymous said...

Thanks for the cool breeze of your commentary. Full moon, whippoorwill calls. Heaven on earth.

On April 17, 2006 at 11:20 PM Scott Fraser said...

Not sure if this was related, but we had an extremely early Whip-poor-will here outside of Philadelphia, PA. March 27! That is at least several weeks earlier than the usual "early" whips out here I believe. I posted about it on PABIRDS here.

The best part was my family getting to here one for the first time - and they all knew what it was immedietly!

Happy birding...

On April 22, 2007 at 10:14 PM Anonymous said...

I was just sitting here with my windows open tonight and heard my whip for the first time....I am in west central Illinois.

On May 11, 2007 at 10:06 PM Anonymous said...

Googled Whippoorwill. Trying to find out about it. We have had one every night on our deck by our bedroom window. I love birds but I wish this one would go out a little farther from my window. It wakes us up every morning about 4 am and doesn't stop for about 30 minutes. We can see it out our window and it sits on the deck railing in the same spot every night. I'm wondering if maybe there is a nest under the deck since it comes back to the same spot every night. It has for 3 weeks now. I don't want to harm it but would sure like to get a good night's sleep.


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