Length	9 to 10 inches
Male	A long-winged bird, mottled all over with reddish brown, grayish black, and dusky white; numerous bristles fringing the large mouth. A narrow white band across the upper breast. Tail quills on the end and under side white.
Female	Similar to male, except that the tail is dusky in color where that of the male is white. Band on breast buff instead of white.
Range	United States, to the plains. Not common near the sea.
Migrations	Late April to middle of September. Summer resident.

The Whippoorwill, because of its nocturnal habits and plaintive note, is invested with a reputation for occult power which inspires a chilling awe among superstitious people, and leads them insanely to attribute to it an evil influence; but it is a harmless, useful night prowler, flying low and catching enormous numbers of hurtful insects, always the winged varieties, in its peculiar fly-trap mouth.

The Whippoorwill loves the rocky, solitary woods, where it sleeps all day; but it is seldom seen, even after painstaking search, because of its dull, mottled markings conforming so nearly to rocks and dry leaves, and because of its unusual habit of stretching itself length-wise on a tree branch or ledge, where it is easily confounded with a patch of lichen, and thus overlooked. If by accident one happens upon a sleeping bird, it suddenly rouses and flies away, making no more sound than a passing butterfly -- a curious and uncanny silence that is quite remarkable. When the sun goes down and as the gloaming deepens, the bird's activity increases, and it begins its nightly duties, emitting from time to time, like a sentry on his post or a watchman of the night, the doleful call which has given the bird its common name.

"Mourns unseen, and ceaseless sings - Ever a note of wail and woe", that our Dutch ancestors interpreted as "Quote-kerr-kee," and so called it. They had a tradition that no frost ever appeared after the bird had been heard calling in the spring, and that it wisely left for warmer skies before frost came in the autumn. Prudent bird, never caught napping!

It is erratic in its choice of habitations, even when rock and solitude seem suited to its taste. Very rarely is this odd bird found close to the seashore, and in the Hudson River valley it keeps a half mile or more back from the river.

Whippoorwill's eggs, generally two in number, are creamy white, dashed with dark and olive spots, and laid on the ground on dry leaves, or in a little hollow in rock or stump -- never in a nest built with loving care. But in extenuation of such carelessness it may be said that, if disturbed or threatened, the mother shows no lack of maternal instinct, and removes her young, carrying them in her beak as a cat conveys her kittens to secure shelter.

COMMON NIGHTHAWK
(Chordeiles virginianus) Goatsucker family
AKA: NIGHTJAR; BULL-BAT; MOSQUITO HAWK; WILL-O'-THE-WISP; LONGWINGED GOATSUCKER

Length	9 to 10 inches
Male	Mottled blackish brown and rufous above, with a multitude of cream-yellow spots and dashes. Lighter below, with waving bars of brown on breast and underneath. White mark on throat, like an imperfect horseshoe; also a band of white across tail of male bird. Heavy wings, which are partly mottled, are brown on shoulders and tips, and longer than tail. They have large white spots, conspicuous in flight, one of their distinguishing marks from the whippoorwill. Head large and depressed, with large eyes and ear-openings. Very small bill.
Female	No band of white across the tail.
Range	From Mexico to arctic islands.
Migrations	May. October. Common summer resident.

The Nighthawk's misleading name could not well imply more that the bird is not. It is not nocturnal in its habits, neither is it a hawk, for if it were, no account of it would be given in this book, which distinctly excludes birds of prey. Stories of its chicken-stealing prove to be ignorant rather than malicious slanders. Any one disliking the name, however, surely cannot complain of a limited choice of other names by which, in different sections of the country, it is quite as commonly known.

Too often the Nighthawk is mistaken for the whippoorwill. The night hawk does not have the weird and woeful cry of that more dismal bird, but gives instead a harsh, whistling note while on the wing, followed by a vibrating, booming, whirring sound that Nuttall describes as "the rapid turning of a spinning wheel, or a strong blowing into the bung-hole of an empty hogshead." This peculiar sound is responsible for the name nightjar, frequently given to this curious bird.

The noise is said to be made as the bird drops suddenly through the air, creating a sort of stringed instrument of its outstretched wings and tail. When these wings are spread, their large white spots running through the feathers to the under side should be noted to further distinguish the nighthawk from the whippoorwill, which has none, but which it otherwise closely resembles. This booming sound, coming from such a height that the bird itself is often unseen, was said by the Indians to be made by the shad spirits to warn the schools of shad about to ascend the rivers to spawn in the spring, of their impending fate.

The flight of the Common Nighthawk is free and graceful in the extreme. Soaring through space without any apparent motion of its wings, suddenly it darts with amazing swiftness like an erratic bat after the fly, mosquito, beetle, or moth that falls within the range of its truly hawk-like eye.

Usually Nighthawks hunt in little companies in the most sociable fashion. Late in the summer they seem to be almost gregarious. They fly in the early morning or late afternoon with beak wide open, hawking for insects, but except when the moon is full they are not known to go hunting after sunset. During the heat of the day and at night they rest on limbs of trees, fence-rails, stone walls, lichen-covered rocks or old logs -- wherever nature has provided suitable mimicry of their plumage to help conceal them.

With this object in mind, they quite often choose a hollow surface of rock in some waste pasture or the open ground on which to deposit the two speckled-gray eggs that sixteen days later will give birth to their family. But in August, when family cares have ended for the season, it is curious to find this bird of the thickly wooded country readily adapting itself to city life, resting on roofs, darting into the streets from the housetops, and wheeling about the electric lights, making a hearty supper of the little, winged insects they attract.

EASTERN MEADOWLARK
(Sturnella magna) Blackbird family
AKA: FIELD LARK; OLDFIELD LARK

Length	10 to 11 inches
Male	Upper parts brown, varied with chestnut, deep brown, and black. Crown streaked with brown and black, and with a cream-colored streak through the centre. Dark-brown line apparently running through the eye; another line over eye, yellow. Throat and chin yellow; a large conspicuous black crescent on breast. Underneath yellow, shading into buffy brown, spotted or streaked with very dark brown. Outer tail feathers chiefly white, conspicuous in flight. Long, strong legs and claws, adapted for walking. Less black in winter plumage, which is more grayish brown.
Female	Similar to, but paler than the male.
Range	North America, from Newfoundland to the Gulf of Mexico, and westward to the plains, where the Western meadowlark takes its place. Winters from Massachusetts and Illinois southward.
Migrations	April. Late October. Usually a resident, a few remaining through the winter.

In the same meadows with the red-winged blackbirds, birds of another feather, but of the same family, nevertheless, may be found flocking, hunting, building nests, and rearing their young very near each other with the truly social instinct of all their kin.

The Eastern Meadowlark, which is really not a lark at all, but the blackbirds' and orioles' cousins, are so protected by the coloring of the feathers on their backs, that ten blackbirds are noticed for every meadowlark even though the Meadowlark is very common. Not until you flush a flock of them as you walk along the roadside or through the meadows and you note the white tail feathers and the black crescents on the yellow breasts of the large brown birds that rise towards the tree-tops with whirring sound and a flight suggesting the quail's, do you suspect there are any birds among the tall grasses.

The Meadowlark's clear and piercing whistle, "Spring o' the y-e-a-r, Spring o' the year!" rings out from the trees with varying intonation and accent, but always sweet and inspiriting. To the bird's high vantage ground you may not follow, for no longer having the protection of the high grass, it has become wary and flies away as you approach, calling out "peent-peent" and nervously flitting its tail (again showing the white feather), when it rests a moment on the pasture fence-rail.

It is like looking for a needle in a haystack to try to find a Meadowlark's nest, an unpretentious structure of dried grasses partly arched over and hidden in a clump of high timothy, flat upon the ground. But what havoc snakes and field-mice play with the white-speckled eggs and helpless fledglings! The care of rearing two or three broods in a season and the change of plumage to duller winter tints seem to exhaust the high spirits of the sweet whistler.

For a time he is silent, but partly regains his vocal powers in the autumn, when, with large flocks of his own kind, he resorts to marshy feeding grounds.

In the winter he chooses for companions the horned larks, that walk along the shore, or the snow buntings and sparrows of the inland pastures, and will even include the denizens of the barn-yard when hunger drives him close to the haunts of men.

The Western Meadowlark or Prairie Lark (Sturnella magna neglecta), which many ornithologists consider a different species from the foregoing [as does Audobon 1998], is distinguished chiefly by its lighter, more grayish-brown plumage, by its yellow cheeks, and more especially by its richer, fuller song. In his "Birds of Manitoba" Mr. Ernest E. Thompson says of this meadowlark: "In richness of voice and modulation it equals or excels both wood thrush and
nightingale, and in the beauty of its articulation it has no superior in the whole world of feathered choristers with which I am acquainted."

BROWN THRASHER
(Harporhynchus rufus) Thrasher & Mocking-bird family
AKA: BROWN THRUSH; GROUND THRUSH; RED THRUSH; BROWN MOCKING-BIRD; MAVIS

Length	11 to 11.5 inches
Male	Rusty red-brown or rufous above; darkest on wings, which have two short whitish bands. Underneath white, heavily streaked (except on throat) with dark-brown, arrow-shaped spots. Tail very long. Yellow eyes. Bill long and curved at tip.
Female	Similar to, but paler than the male.
Range	United States to Rockies. Nests from Gulf States to Manitoba and Montreal. Winters south of Virginia.
Migrations	Late April. October. Common summer resident.

"There's a merry brown thrush sitting up in a tree;
He is singing to me! He is singing to me!
And what does he say, little girl, little boy?
'Oh, the world's running over with joy!'"

The hackneyed poem beginning with this stanza that delighted our nursery days, has left in our minds a fairly correct impression of the bird. The Brown Thrasher still proves to be one of the perennially joyous singers, like a true cousin of the wrens, and when we study him in the field, he appears to give his whole attention to his song with a self-consciousness that is rather amusing than the reverse.

"What musician wouldn't be conscious of his own powers," he seems to challenge us, "if he possessed such a gift?"

Seated on a conspicuous perch, as if inviting attention to his performance, with uplifted head and drooping tail he repeats the one exultant, dashing air to which his repertoire is limited, without waiting for an encore. Much practice has given the notes a brilliancy of execution to be compared only with the mockingbird's; but in spite of the name "ferruginous mocking-bird" that Audubon gave him, he does not seem to have the faculty of imitating other birds' songs. Thoreau says the Massachusetts farmers, when planting their seed, always think they hear the thrasher say, "Drop it, drop it -- cover it up, cover it up -- pull it up, pull it up, pull it up."

However, our "merry brown thrush" is no thrush at all, but a thrasher -- first cousin to the wrens, in spite of his speckled breast, large size, and certain thrush-like instincts, such as never singing near the nest and shunning mankind in the nesting season, to mention only two.

Certainly the Brown Thrasher has a bold, swinging flight and a habit of hopping and running over the ground that would seem to indicate that he is not very far removed from the true thrushes. But he has one undeniable wren-like trait, that of twitching, wagging, and thrashing his long tail about to help express his emotions. It swings like a pendulum as he rests on a branch, and thrashes about in a most ludicrous way as he is feeding on the ground upon the worms, insects, and fruit that constitute his diet.

Before the fatal multiplication of cats, and in sandy locations still, the thrasher builds her nest upon the ground, thus earning the name "ground thrush" that is often given her; but with dearly paid-for wisdom she now most frequently selects a low shrub or tree to cradle the two broods that all too early in the summer effectually silence the father's delightful song.

BLACK-BILLED CUCKOO
(Coccyzus erythrophthalmus) Cuckoo family
AKA: RAIN CROW

Length	11 to 12 inches
Male	Grayish brown above, with bronze tint in feathers. Underneath grayish white; bill, which is long as head and black, arched and acute. Skin about the eye bright red. Tail long, and with spots on tips of quills that are small and inconspicuous.
Female	Has obscure dusky bars on the tail.
Range	Labrador to Panama; westward to Rocky Mountains.
Migrations	May. September. Summer resident.

"O cuckoo! shalt I call thee bird?
Or but a wandering voice?"

We hear the cuckoo calling; but how many on this side of the Atlantic are familiar with its American counterpart? Here, too, the cuckoo delights in running water and damp, cloudy weather like that of an English spring; it haunts the willows by our river-sides, where as yet no "immortal bard" arises to give it fame. It "loud sings" in our shrubbery, too.

Indeed, if we cannot study the Black-Billed Cuckoo in the field, the next best place to become acquainted with it is in the pages of the English poets. But due allowance must be made for differences of temperament. Our cuckoo is scarcely a "merry harbinger"; his talents, such as they are, certainly are not musical. However, the guttural cluck is not discordant, and the black-billed species, at least, has a soft, mellow voice that seems to indicate an embryonic songster.

"K-k-k-k, kow-kow-ow-kow-ow!" is a familiar sound in many localities, but the large, slim, pigeon-shaped, brownish-olive bird that makes it, securely hidden in the low trees and shrubs that are its haunts, is not often personally known.

Catching a glimpse only of the grayish-white under parts from where we stand looking up into the tree at it, it is quite impossible to tell the bird from the yellow-billed species. When, as it flies about, we are able to note the red circles about its eyes, its black bill, and the absence of black tail feathers, with their white "thumb-nail" spots, and see no bright cinnamon feathers on the wings (the yellow-billed specie's distinguishing marks), we can at last claim acquaintance with the Black-Billed Cuckoo. Our two common cuckoos are so nearly alike that they are constantly confused in the popular mind and very often in the writings of ornithologists. At first glance the birds look alike. Their haunts are almost identical; their habits are the same; and, as they usually keep well out of sight, it is not surprising if confusion arise.

Neither cuckoo knows how to build a proper home; a bunch of sticks dropped carelessly into the bush, where the hapless babies that emerge from the greenish eggs will not have far to fall when they tumble out of bed, as they must inevitably do, may by courtesy only be called a nest. Insects of many kinds and "tent caterpillars" chiefly are their chosen food.

YELLOW-BILLED CUCKOO
(Coccyzus americanus) Cuckoo family

Length	11 to 12 inches
Male	Grayish brown above, with bronze tint in feathers. Underneath grayish white. Bill, which is as long as head, arched, acute, and more robust than the black-billed species, and with lower mandible yellow. Wings washed with bright cinnamon-brown. Tail has outer quills black, conspicuously marked with white thumb-nail spots.
Female	Slightly larger.
Range	North America, from Mexico to Labrador. Most common in temperate climates. Rare on Pacific slope.
Migrations	Late April. September. Summer resident.

"Kak, k-kuh, k-kuk, k-kuk!" like an exaggerated tree-toad's rattle, is a sound that, when first heard, makes you rush out of doors instantly to "name" the bird.

Look for the Yellow-Billed Cuckoo in the depths of the tall shrubbery or low trees, near running water, if there is any in the neighborhood, and if you are more fortunate than most people, you will soon become acquainted with the yellow-billed cuckoo.

When seen perching at a little distance, his large, slim body, grayish brown, with olive tints above and whitish below, can scarcely be distinguished from that of the black-billed species. It is not until you get close enough to note the yellow bill, reddish-brown wings, and black tail feathers with their white "thumb-nail" marks, that you know which cuckoo you are watching. In repose the bird looks dazed or stupid, but as it darts about among the trees after insects, noiselessly slipping to another one that promises better results, and hopping along the limbs after performing a series of beautiful evolutions among the branches as it hunts for its favorite "tent caterpillars," it appears what it really is: an unusually active, graceful, intelligent bird.

A solitary wanderer, nevertheless one cuckoo in an apple orchard is worth a hundred robins in ridding it of caterpillars and inch-worms, for it delights in killing many more of these than it can possibly eat. In the autumn the Yellow Billed Cuckoo varies its diet with small fresh-water shellfish from the swamp and lake.

Mulberries, that look so like caterpillars the bird possibly likes them on that account, is devoured in large quantities.

Family cares rest lightly on the cuckoos. The nest of both species is a ramshackle affair -- a mere bundle of twigs and sticks without a rim to keep the eggs from rolling from the bush, where they rest, to the ground. Unlike their European relative, they have the decency to rear their own young and not impose this heavy task on others; but the cuckoos on both sides of the Atlantic are most erratic and irregular in their nesting habits.

The overworked mother-bird often lays an egg while brooding over its nearly hatched companion, and the two or three half-grown fledglings already in the nest may roll the large greenish eggs out upon the ground, while both parents are off searching for food to quiet their noisy clamour.

Such distracting mismanagement in the nursery is enough to make a homeless wanderer of any father. It is the mother-bird that tumbles to the ground at your approach from sheer fright; feigns lameness, trails her wings as she tries to entice you away from the nest. The male Yellow Billed Cuckoo shows far less concern; a no more devoted father, than he is a lover. It is said he changes his mate every year.

Altogether, the cuckoo is a very different sort of bird from what is in our mind of Swiss creatures of wood that fly out of the doors of clocks. The American bird does not repeat its name, and its harsh, grating "kuk, kuk," does not remotely suggest the sweet voice of its European relative.

FLICKER
(Colaptes auratus) Woodpecker family
AKA: GOLDEN-WINGED WOODPECKER; CLAPE; PIGEON WOODPECKER; YELLOWHAMMER; HIGH HOLE OR HIGH-HOLDER; YARUP; WAKE-UP; YELLOW-SHAFTED WOODPECKER

Bird Photo - Flicker - Woodpecker

Length	12 to 13 inches
Male	Head and neck bluish gray, with a red crescent across back of neck and a black crescent on breast. Male has black cheek-patches, that are wanting in female. Golden brown shading into brownish-gray, and barred with black above. Underneath whitish, tinged with light chocolate and thickly spotted with black. Wing linings, shafts of wing, and tail quills bright yellow. Above tail white, conspicuous when the bird flies.
Female	Same as male.
Range	United States, east of Rockies; Alaska and British America, south of Hudson Bay. Occasionally on Pacific slope.
Migrations	Most commonly seen from April to October. Usually Resident.

If we were to follow the list of thirty-six aliases by which this largest and commonest of our woodpeckers is known throughout its wide range, we should find all its peculiarities of color, flight, noises, and habits indicated in
its popular names.

The Flicker cannot but attract attention wherever seen, with its beautiful plumage, conspicuously yellow if its outstretched wings are looked at from below, conspicuously brown and white if seen upon the ground.

At a distance the Flicker looks a lot like the meadowlark. Both birds wear black, crescent breast decorations, and the Flicker also has the habit of feeding upon the ground, especially in autumn, a characteristic not shared by its close relations.

Early in the spring this bird of many names and many voices makes itself known by a long, strong, sonorous call, a sort of proclamation that differs from its song proper, which Audubon calls "a prolonged jovial laugh" (described by Mrs. Wright as "Wick, wick, wick, wick!") and differs also from its rapidly repeated, mellow, and most musical "cub, cub, cub, cub, cub", uttered during the nesting season.

Its nasal "kee-yer", vigorously called out in the autumn, is less characteristic, however, than the sound it makes while associating with its fellows on the feeding ground -- a sound that Frank M. Chapman says can be closely imitated by the swishing of a willow wand.

A very ardent and ridiculous-looking lover is this bird, as, with tail stiffly spread, he sidles up to his desired mate and bows and bobs before her, then retreats and advances, bowing and bobbing again, very often with a rival lover beside him (whom he generously tolerates) trying to outdo him in grace and general attractiveness. Not the least of the bird's qualities that must commend themselves to the bride is his unfailing good nature, genial alike in the home and in the field.

The "high-holders" have the peculiar and silly habit of boring out a number of superfluous holes for nests high up in the trees, in buildings, or hollow wooden columns, only one of which they intend to use.

Six white eggs is the proper number for a household, but Dr. Coues says the female that has been robbed keeps on laying three or even four sets of eggs without interruption.

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Small Brown Birds

Medium Brown Birds

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