A few years ago, when we moved to the south, we started hearing crazy loud birds all through the night. They would call out to each other in a distant triangulation. Eventually we decided they were whippoorwills and called it good. Last month I surprised a strange looking bird with crazy large eyes in my back yard. I drug my hubby outside to check it out and with his keen eyes he not only spotted her, but found her nest on the ground with little pink eggs in it. We later snuck over to see her on her nest and I had to stare and strain forever to finally spot her. Talk about camouflage! She looked just like a pile of leaves on the ground. Not even a pile, just the leafy ground. It was amazing looking right at her, I could not make out her features from the ground.
I started looking up birds online to figure out what this bird was. Kestrel? Owl? Whippoorwill? It was more brown than the whippoorwill, but definitely in a nearby weird family. I finally found a helpful website that had all the answers about my mystery bird. The Call of the Night
As if whippoorwill is not a strange enough name, my little bird and her friends are a type of nightjar known as “chuck-will’s widow” like the whippoorwill, chuck- will’s widow will are named after their bird call. Over and over through the night they make an unwavering four syllable call and if you listen in the distance their friend answers with and identical “chuck’s-wid-ow-will” and the whole thing starts over.
Randy and I snuck out and placed a game camera near her. She hopped up and started acting like her wing was injured (like killdeer do). As we placed the camera we spotted a tiny brown ball of fluff hop around where she had fled from. We were worried we bothered her too much, but we ran off and hoped for the best.
Today we finally retrieved the camera and that is the footage above. I don’t know why there is no sound. You have to really look for her. One of my favorite parts is when she opens her crazy giant mouth to defend her space from the chickens. Yes, I know it looks like a chicken video, but that was not my intention. In the night vision footage you can really see her best with her huge shiny eye, and after the part where she flies off, you can spot two tiny baby birds hopping off stage left. A little later the possum follows the same path. I could not find her in any of the remaining videos.
I am hoping she just settled into a new spot and the babies are fine. Some pessimist nearby is pointing out that there has been a lot of late night bird banter and is speculating that she may be starting over with the whole family making thing, because her babies were eaten by an opossum. In a little while we will go out exploring and look for them. Will she show up? I hope so. I will update you with our findings.
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