Connecticut western news., 1912-07-25
Letters From the People
Poor Will,
To the Editor of The News :-

To the Editor of The News:-
 Permit me to explain in head-note, the foot-note pertaining to the song habits of the Whip-poor-will which accompanied the poem you so kindly re- published from Temple Bar, whose editor accepted the foot-note without challenge.
 During a summer sojourn in locality known as Beech Hill, the house where boarded stood near a densely wooded hill. The whip-poor-wil used to come in astonishing numbers and take dust bath in the roadway in front of the house, in the early twilight They would sing in the dooryard, and once one actually sang on the doorstep. All that summer saw whip-poor- wills, and heard them too, at close range, but l never once heard them sing after mid night, and the cessation of their husky clamor after that hour was frequently noted by me because the noise of so many of them disturbed sleep. and the silence seemed so restful after their insistent reiterations. They often began it all over again toward morning, but morning is not midnight-which l for got to state in the foot-note-yet since three o'clock is admitted, even by w. F. Will, to be "early morning." the explanation would have seemed super fluous.
 Gan dispute Wilson's authority? have no need to, since, at this instant, l am copying verbatim, from the "Child- ren's Picture Book of Birds" published by Harper Bros, 1881, the following sentence from Wilson lore: "The song of the whip-poor- is heard at twi- light, and seldom continues after the hour of midnight" From a noted modern authority on birds I get this | 'I have never heard whip poor-w wills sing later than Il o'clock in the even ing, nor earlier than in the morning. ''
 From Birds and Nature," of which possess 16 bound volumes, could quote dozens of sentences from bird authorities, in substance like the forego- ing. No doubt but that on exception ally brilliant nights a whip-poor-wil breaks forth into singing now and then, just as, 8 rooster will sometimes crow long before morning. But we must not take the rooster "too literally" nor ac accuse him of making a misleading statement. Both rooster and whip poor will are probably trying to get out of the old rut of habit.
 AS for the old time bird authorities, Wilson's and Audubon's conflicting statements have been challenged for years, while Flagg, H. K. Job, Bur roughs, Gibson, Torrey, Robinson, and dozen more, each disputes the others knowledge and observations of birds; for instance, MT. Job does not believe that partridges get drunk from eating poke berries; a number of bird authorities declare they do. I, personally, had an amusing experience with a tipsy par fridge. and feel positive that the major ity are in the right about it. AS for the whip poor wills of my summer expert ence, perhaps they were indigenous to the soil, and therefore, Beech Hill whip poor wills.
 The kind and obliging newspaper and magazine editors do not like too lengthy foot notes appended to poem or prose articles, and so the writer has to depend on the general intelligence of the reader to interpret rightly the meaning and intention of many things published, in cluding the printers unintentional mis- takes, as for instance, in the Whip-poor- will verse, the word "along" should have been ''alone," to rhyme with tone as originally intended. There's where the author had to trust to the reader general intelligence.
 B. A. HITCHCOCK.