In April of 2020 I arrived home just before nine in the evening. I stepped out of the car and was greeted by the unmistakable call of an eastern whip-poor-will. It was a sound I had not heard in decades, and it instantly surfaced long-dormant memories of summer evenings outdoors. I sprinted from my driveway to the edge of a small patch of woods a hundred yards or so away, silently willing the bird to continue calling long enough to capture a recording. It cooperated, singing for perhaps five minutes before falling silent. I searched the woods the next morning, knowing it was a fool’s errand. Whip-poor-wills are invisible. And while Louisville is technically well within their breeding range, their numbers have declined drastically. To this day, my observation is the only recording of an eastern whip-poor-will for Jefferson County, Kentucky, in Cornell’s Macaulay Library. I dreamed of getting a photo, but accepted that I probably never would. Then one day in early May, carefully descending a steep deer path in Cherokee Park, my birding companion, just a couple yards ahead of me, exclaimed “there’s a whip-poor-will!” My eyes locked onto the bird before he finished his sentence. Capturing this image of a whip-poor-will in its classic parallel-to-the-branch roosting position was a highlight of 2023.