Whip Poor Will Bird Call

Legend says the whip-poor-will can sense a soul departing, and can capture it as it flees. This is used as a plot device in H. P. Lovecraft's story The Dunwich Horror. This is likely related to an earlier Native American and general American folk belief that the singing of the birds is a death omen. This is the song of an eastern whippoorwill (Antrostomus vociferus) recorded in a New Hampshire forest. Several of these birds have been singing around my home at night for the past few weeks and one got close enough to get a good recording from a mic placed on the porch.