What is behind the disappearance of the Whip-poor-wills?
Jared Del Rosso, associate professor and chair of sociology and criminology at the University of Denver, examines this loss and the meanings behind it.
Jared Del Rosso is a cultural sociologist in the Department of Sociology & Criminology at the University of Denver. He is currently writing a book, tentatively titled The Lonesome Whip-poor-will: Untold Stories of America’s Most Iconic Bird, for NYU Press’s “Animals in Context” series. He has written on Whip-poor-wills and their relatives for Audubon, The Conversation, and the Center for Humans and Nature.
Waiting For Whip-poor-wills
We used to wait for Eastern Whip-poor-wills to turn winter into spring.
The birds, which are members of the nightjar family, return to their nesting grounds in eastern North America in April and May.
Once back, Whip-poor-wills begin chanting their names to moonlit nights.
A long-standing belief held that the first call of a Whip-poor-will extinguished the threat of frost. This meant that it was time to plant frost-tender crops like corn and beans.
But over the 20th century, Whip-poor-wills retreated from our world. And we, perhaps, stopped waiting.
Conservationists estimate that Whip-poor-will populations have declined by about 70% over the last 50 years. The loss of habitat and prey may be driving this decline.
Today, Whip-poor-wills are conspicuous in their absence. In poetry, song, and nature writing, nostalgia replaces seasonal lore. This is a nostalgia for lost places, lost ways of life, and lost companions—human and non-human alike.
In this, our relationship with Whip-poor-wills reflects the broader landscape of climate changed emotions like eco-grief or solastalgia. The underlying experience is of loss. An invasive insect threatens a favorite species of tree. A much-loved butterfly goes missing. A bird’s song goes silent.
So what can we do?
Management strategies that create diverse forests of young and mature trees seem to help Whip-poor-wills, and in many states where the birds breed, biologists are studying the effects of these strategies.
As a social scientist, I also wonder if we can learn again to attend to the earth, its seasons, and its signs.
After all, we once waited for Whip-poor-wills to turn winter into spring.
Perhaps we will again.
