I have to take the opportunity to write about onomatopoetic birds, because really, how many chances do you get to use the word onomatopoeia?
Just a few weeks ago, I was surprised and excited to hear the sound of an eastern whippoorwill calling just a hundred yards from my house. I find these unusual birds fascinating, and they had been on my mind (yes, these are the kinds of things I think about). I have a somewhat irrational personal goal of getting a photograph of one, which is exceptionally difficult for reasons that will become apparent. As I thought about that challenge, I realized I hadn’t even heard one in at least a couple decades. Anyway, I had been thinking about whippoorwills, and a whippoorwill appeared practically on my doorstep. Isn’t it interesting how things we put our attention seem to just appear in our lives? No chance for a photo, but I did manage to record its call.
Last night, a birding friend texted me and asked if I wanted to go look for a closely related bird, the chuck-will’s-widow. Local birders had reported hearing “chucks” at a park on the south side of Louisville. Of course I was in for that! At about 9:30PM, just as we were about to give up, we began hearing faint calls. The chucks were awake, but they were a long way off. We headed for our cars excited to have found them, but a little disappointed not to hear them more clearly, let alone get a recording. But then we got even luckier to find at least two birds calling much closer to where we had parked. I trudged through the muddy woods to get away from the VERY loud frogs in near total darkness, getting eaten by mosquitos, and was able to capture some audio. Mission accomplished!
Check out this video if you want to know what I mean by “huge” mouth.
Chuck-will’s-widows and whippoorwills are very strange and interesting birds. They are part of a group of birds called “nightjars.” Their names, as you have probably figured out, are onomatopoeias (onomatopoeiae?) for their calls. They have tiny beaks but huge mouths for catching insects on the wing. As nocturnal predators, they have big eyes. Their feathers provides incredible camouflage to avoid being spotted as they roost motionless during the daylight hours. Nocturnal birds like owls and night herons have long been the source of legend and folk lore, and the nightjars are no exception. They are part of the family Caprimulgidae - literally “goat suckers” - because people believed they fed on the milk of goats at night! (they don’t - they eat bugs). In fact, the eastern whippoorwill was formerly Caprimulgus vociferus, or “vociferous goat-sucker.” It is now called Antrostomus vociferus, meaning essentially “vociferous cave mouth” - not much more flattering.
Check out the videos - sound on - and see if you can hear the whippoorwill and Chuck-will’s-widows saying their names!
P.S. - to answer my original question, it turns out that if you like birds, you get lots of opportunities to use the word onomatopoeia: phoebe, cuckoo, towhee, pewee, chickadee, bobwhite…
P.P.S - my birding friend is Ron Hirsch. I owe many of these interesting finds to him. There is only one photo of an eastern whippoorwill on record for Jefferson County, Kentucky in eBird, and it’s Ron’s (so it IS possible, though he will tell you it was a complete fluke!). Coincidentally, there is also only one recording of a whippoorwill in Jefferson County in eBird - mine!
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