The phrase most often associated with the whip-poor-will is “more often heard than seen.” In our context, we might add that the whip-poor-will is more often encountered than expected, and more often in Minnesota than in North Dakota.
A check of ebird.com, a site on which birders post their sightings, shows 37 recent whip-poor-will reports from North Dakota, against 791 for Minnesota. None of the North Dakota reports are from this year. This supports the notion that the whip-poor-will is casual or erratic here.
That hasn’t always been the case. Elliot Coues, an Army surgeon assigned to the U.S. Boundary Survey in 1874, reported being “serenaded every night in June by a chorus of these strange voices penetrating the darkness, it seemed, from all points at once along a line of heavy timber that skirted the river.”
Robert E. Stewart quotes Coues, one of the 19th century's most eminent “birdmen,” in his book, “Breeding Birds of North Dakota,” which was published in 1975. He also notes a report by Thomas Say, another famous naturalist, who visited the Red River Valley in 1823. Stewart’s last record of breeding whip-poor-wills in the state is from 1923, at Grafton, N.D.
Ebird, maintained by Cornell University, has recent sightings from Grand Forks and Buxton, N.D., in 2017 and from the Milnor area in southeastern North Dakota in 2019.
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I have encountered whip-poor-wills twice in North Dakota, once when a neighbor reported hearing one in the shelterbelt behind her farmhouse, and once when a whip-poor-will called while I was closing up outbuildings for the night at our place near Gilby, N.D., northwest of Grand Forks.
These birds were migrants, most likely, bound for nesting areas a bit farther north in Manitoba.
In Minnesota, the story is different. Whip-poor-wills nest in heavily wooded areas of the state, and they are regularly occurring migrants. Ebird’s maps indicate that recent sightings have been more numerous near Lake of the Woods, which brings them well into our area.
My most memorable encounter with whip-poor-wills occurred there, at Zippel Bay State Park, close to 40 years ago.
The whip-poor-will is a secretive bird, active only at twilight and on moonlit nights. Ornithologists suspect that the birds time their cycles to the phases of the moon, allowing them to gather food for nestlings when the moon is full.
The species occurring in our area is the eastern whip-poor-will. The adjective implies that there is another whip-poor-will species in North America. A recent “split” elevated what had been considered a subspecies to full species status. This bird, the Mexican whip-poor-will, occurs in the United States only in southern Arizona and New Mexico.
The whip-poor-wills are members of a group of birds called “nightjars,” characterized by cryptic coloration and gaping mouths, a circumstance that once earned them the name “goatsuckers.” The family occurs almost worldwide. Some African species develop extraordinarily long plumes.
All of the nightjars are crepuscular, pretty much hiding out during the day and emerging to feast on flying insects as dusk approaches.
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The most common member of the group in our area is the common nighthawk, which can be seen “hawking” insects in Grand Forks. It sometimes nests on rooftops. The nighthawk is distinguished by its long backswept wings marked by white and by its habit of diving, which produces a whistle in its wings.
Farther west, the common poorwill, a smaller species related to the whip-poor-will, is occasional in North Dakota. Meriwether Lewis found one along the Missouri River just north of what became the state's southern boundary. That was in 1804.
Brad Dokken, outdoor editor of the Herald and the person responsible for shepherding this column into the newspaper, prompted my interest in whip-poor-wills, with reports that he had heard them at his getaway north of Roseau, Minn. He has written about whip-poor-wills a number of times, but as far as my search of the Herald’s online archive tells me, this is only the second appearance of the whip-poor-will in this column. The other was in 1990, in the first week of June.
Jacobs is a retired publisher and editor of the Herald. Reach him at mjacobs@polarcomm.com.
