With lengthening days, thoughts slip away to warmer weather, camping in wild sagebrush country, and the call of the poorwill at dusk. While whippoorwills inhabiting the eastern U. S. are renowned for their evening calls, their western counterpart, the common poorwill, is largely unknown. Poorwills belong to the avian Order Caprimulgiformes (goatsuckers or nightjars), and have large gaping mouths for catching night-flying insects in the air. Poorwills fly up from the ground to catch insects, or may forage on the wing, though never with the panache of the often higher flying and swooping nighthawk, another nightjar found in the West. The echoic name “poorwill” comes from the sound of the bird’s call. The scientific name Phalaenoptilus is derived from the Greek for mothfeathered and refers to the powdery, velvety plumage (Fred A. Ryser Birds of the Great Basin).

Cryptic poorwills nest on the ground, in a bare unlined depression, laying only two eggs. Compare that to the sage grouse with a clutch size of 7 or 8 eggs!

Little is known about the poorwill, and its numbers are not readily tracked by daylight Breeding Bird Survey routes. Poorwills may be seen on bare road surfaces after dark, their eyes glowing pinkish-red in the headlights. They fly up to catch insects that may be attracted to the warmer road surface. Unfortunately, they often wait until the last moment to flutter up, and then land again in the road right in front of the car – and are killed. I’ve stopped in daylight to examine road-killed poorwills, and am always amazed at their beauty, and the incredible softness of the feathers. Several times in the southern Idaho northern Nevada, I’ve had to quit driving for the night – the only way to avoid hitting poorwills on minor roads.

In summer, in middle to higher elevation still intact sagebrush country (upper Wyoming big sagebrush to high elevation mountain big sagebrush zones), poorwills can be heard calling at dusk. People I’ve been out with have wondered if the intriguing soft repeated Poor-Will, Poor-will calls, (or Poor-will-ip – a third syllable when heard at close distances) was some kind of an owl, or even a dove.

The most-studied element of poorwill biology may be a physiological adaptation that allows it to become torpid, an adaptation for conserving energy and surviving cold spells when insects are scarce.

Poorwill sagebrush habitats are threatened by cheatgrass and weed invasions that cause loss of native plant species and insect diversity, and also shortened fire cycles that doom sagebrush recovery. Cheatgrass spread is facilitated by chronic livestock disturbance. We don’t know much at all about this species, yet land management agencies are proceeding recklessly on a path of continued destruction of its sagebrush habitats – a path accelerated by the Healthy Forests Initiative and complacent federal agencies eagerly padding their budgets with federal fire funds.

Just like the deceptive title ‘healthy’, the BLM and Forest Service “treatments” in sagebrush country are deceptively claimed to reduce “hazardous fuels”, or wildlife habitat and diversity” – through disturbance of mowing, chopping, herbiciding or burning sagebrush. Many of these projects are trumpeted as benefiting sage grouse, yet in the end will be little more than cheatgrass increase projects, as the cumulative disturbance of chronic livestock grazing on top of the “treatment” disturbance creates ideal conditions for weeds. Plus, as roading and road use on public land increases (countless roads on public lands are directly linked to livestock projects – and each new livestock water pipeline or fence line is likely to eventually become a road), not to mention exploding roading with energy development in many portions of their range, poorwills will be hit (literally) even harder.

In June, especially near the full moon, poorwills will call all through the night.In old growth and mature big sagebrush, sage thrashers may be heard singing at night amidst calling poorwills. Near streams with broad bands of thick willow, alder or other shrub cover – a rarity in so many of the West’s livestock-altered streams - yellow-breasted chats also sing their raucous chortling songs at night.These birds, and their moonlight songs, are part of the allure of wild sagebrush country that is seldom noticed and seldom appreciated. Certainly not by the federal agencies that are engaged in a new wave of sagebrush “treatment” and habitat destruction.

Katie Fite is WWP’s Biodiversity Director She lives in Boise, Idaho