What farm boy has not heard this birdless voice echoing from the ghostly shades of the thicket close at hand, or scarcely audible in the distance? Perhaps you have heard it as you have passed between the wood and the hill over there, coming clear from the wood but reëchoing from the hill only the shrill last syllable. Farther away on the distant hill-top you may have taken this last syllable for the piping of the salamander. The "whippoorwill" song belongs with the early May moonlit balmy nights, before the blossoms have lost their best perfume and before farm work has become a mere drudgery. It vividly recalls the merry May-basketing frolics, apparently so necessary to existence on the farm; the fresh green fields and woodland blossoms; the planting season with all its hidden promises. There is, in the warble of the bluebird, glad promise of returning spring; and in the animated whistle of the phoebe reiteration of the earlier promise; but the whippoorwill tells of that delightful season realized. His is not a complaint groaned forth, but a glad announcement of joy fully come. My early home nestled in one of those gems of woodland that dot the rolling Iowa prairies. One of my earliest memories of this old home is the twilight choruses of the whippoorwills in the door-yard. They often ventured upon the door-step and sang for minutes at a time, apparently oblivious of the members of the family seated just inside the open door. On more than one occasion more than one bird occupied the door-step at the same time, all the while apparently trying to drown each others' voices in a continuous flow of song. At such times the delightful mellowness which one hears, with the birds in the distance, gives place to an almost painful, penetrating shrillness. The more deliberately uttered song is invariably preceded by a strongly guttural sound not unlike that produced by striking an inflated rubber bag. The near-by song, to my ear, sounds like "_qui ko wee_," the first syllable with a strong "q" sound. I have never heard them sing later than 11 o'clock in the evening nor earlier than 3 in the morning. It is well-nigh impossible to creep upon a singing bird in the woods, even if it could be seen in the dim light, but it was not unusual, at my old home, for the birds to playfully fly round and round anyone who might be standing out in the yard at twilight. The birds often came so close that the wings seemed to brush the face. The flight is so utterly noiseless that the object of their sport is aware of the presence before he can fully realize what it is. The whippoorwill inhabits the eastern portion of the United States, west to eastern North and South Dakota and Nebraska, western Kansas, Indian Territory and Texas; north to southern Canada, into Nova Scotia and Manitoba; and south in winter into eastern Mexico and Guatemala. It breeds in the northern and central parts of its range, and rarely to Florida.