THE BIRD IN THE DARK

One night after sunset, I stepped outside — I don’t remember why unless it was to catch a glimpse of the moon. But once I was out there, some bird called out in a voice that was new to my ears, a soft call of two languid notes repeated. I was sure I’d never heard that sound before.      It wasn’t altogether dark. The deepening sky was navy blue and the moon was out, and the bird repeated the call a few more times, enough times for me to remember. “How now” it could have been, but “poor will” popped into my head and “poor will” certainly did fit. What a piece of luck — if this was a Poorwill, it was a bird I’d been hoping to see!      A better-known cousin is the Whip-poor-will, immortalized in poetry and song. But Whip-poor-wills are birds of the south and east — unlikely in the middle of the America.      With its cry still ringing in my ears, I ran inside and found my birdsong CD, played the cut for Poorwills, and knew it for a match.      I went outside again when a small bird flew past me twice in the gathering dark, not four feet away. I could just make out the shape of its short silhouette. The wings were rounded and the neck was thick, but the bird was no bigger than a sparrow — too small, I thought, to be a Poorwill.      I knew, you see, that Poorwills were related to the Nighthawks, who are often seen at twilight as they fly about at random with their long, angled wings — but Nighthawks are quite a bit bigger than the smallish bird I’d seen.      When I checked my books, I discovered that a Poorwill is only seven inches long, with rounded wings and a short, stocky tail. Its head is large in comparison to its body, and its flight style, described as moth-like and fluttery, exactly matched the small bird I’d seen in the dark.       I’d never identified a new bird in the dark before — I’m not sure if that counts. But the more I read about the Poorwill, the more interesting the bird in the dark became.      The Poorwill is the smallest member of the nightjar family, a sub-group of the goatsucker clan, a class of birds long accused of feeding on the teats of goats. In reality these birds pay scant attention to goats — they scoop insects out of the air instead with mouths gaped open wide for the purpose. When all is said and done, a nightjar’s nightly catch may well exceed a thousand insects.      Poorwills hunt insects exclusively at night — they do not flirt with dusk and dawn as the Nighthawks do. So it makes perfect sense that I saw one at night, as they wait until dark and hunt from a perch on the ground, flying up and out, and then returning to the same spot again.      Nightjars have a  pattern like a scatter of leaves. Their cryptic colors perfectly mimic the bark, branches, dead leaves, canyons, and cliffs they hide in during the day, as they take their rest in preparation for the night shift.      But the really amazing thing about Poorwills is that they may actually hibernate, something no other bird does. When a bird’s body temperature falls below 50 degrees Fahrenheit (a drop to about half of normal), a state of “torpor” is achieved. Several birds, among them Kinglets, Hummingbirds, and a few other nightjars, can go into torpor when food is scarce or the weather is bad.      But Poorwills go torpid when the days grow short, a signature of true hibernation, and the winter range of the insect-eating Poorwill is unknown. It’s possible Poorwills don’t migrate at all, but hunker down in some convenient canyon, to sleep through the winter close at hand.