Chicken Nuggets of the Woods

So, why did I decide to call this blog "Nightjar Nuggets"? You might assume it's because I aim to share nuggets of knowledge. In a way, that would be correct, but at the core of it? No, that is not the main reason. 

The main reason is the fondly nicknamed "Chicken Nuggets of the Woods," otherwise known as the near-and-dear-to-my-heart Eastern Whip-poor-will chicks. 

Like this one:

Or this one:

I'm sure you can see the resemblance. The color. The size. Even the shape.

Now, if you know anything about nightjars like the whip-poor-will, you might be thinking "hang on a moment, nightjars are all about camouflage. Why are the chicks just orange? Aren't the nighthawks doing a better job at this?"

Common Nighthawk (Logan Parker, Maine 2022)

Eastern Whip-poor-will (New York 2024)

True, nighthawk chicks have excellent disruptive coloration that blends in with gravel, sand, and rock, among other things. But don't let the orange fluffiness of the whip-poor-will chicks fool you. It also works really well.

The very first time I saw a whip-poor-will chick, I was unprepared. It was early in the first field season of my master's research in 2023, on the night of June 11. We had been struggling to find whip-poor-will nests, with thermal cameras, eyeshine searches, and walking around whip-poor-will territories failing us. Nine days prior, I had finally stumbled upon a nest by coincidence, but it had only been three days since I had finally cracked the nest search code and began finding nests with telemetry. We had only found three nests, each with a pair of speckled eggs.

That night, I set out after Bird 5, one of our males who we knew was a little bit older. He was a M-TCB, or a minimum of a third cycle basic. Birds in their first molt cycle, the young and inexperienced ones, have some juvenile feathers remaining on their wings, which makes them easy to tell apart from older birds. After they molt again in the late summer (second molt cycle), these young birds are fully covered in adult (basic) feathers. You usually can't tell the difference between a second cycle, third cycle, or even tenth cycle bird. They're all adults. But every once and a while, birds will keep some of their old feathers. Having both old and new basic feathers means that a bird is at least (minimum) a third cycle bird. Such was the case for Bird 5. Thus, he had at least two prior breeding seasons under his belt, and I had high expectations.

I followed Bird 5 from where he slept during the day, in an annoyingly shrubby patch of scrubby trees out in the rock barrens. After waking, he bounced around, likely eating some moths, and headed over to the edge of the nearby forest to challenge his neighbors to a singing contest. Then, he hopped back to his little island of scrubby trees, with me not far behind. His radio signal told me he was stationary, and he wasn't singing. That meant he might be with a nest.

I slowed down, walking diagonally to the direction of his radio signal (which eventually results in walking in a circle around the target). I kept my eyes peeled for the brilliant orange reflection of his eyes, and constantly checked how strong the radio signal from his transmitter was. If he was on a nest and I didn't manage to find him before he left, I might be out of luck entirely that night. Sometimes, the males are only at nests for less than a minute, but I also couldn't spook him.

Stepping from the edge of the barrens into the scrubby trees, I saw him, a blinking orange eye watching me through some nearby shrubs. Then, another eye blinked. He wasn't alone; he was with a female. Only the fourth female I had ever seen at that point, out of countless males. We stared at each other for a minute, each daring the other to move.

I don't disrupt nest sites any more than I have to, so before approaching, I marked the GPS location and snapped a quick photo of the two birds. Instead of pushing my way through the shrubs, I stepped to the side through a small gap, working my way around to try to find a clear, natural opening to the possible nest instead of creating a new path predators might follow. They flushed, calling in their angry defense calls, which sound like drops of water. They were certainly mad at me.

As soon as they flushed, I headed straight to the nest. I needed to be efficient, completing my check in less than a minute. I try to finish while the parents are still actively defensive, so that they know when I leave. In fact, I try to follow the parents away from the nest, reassuring them that they are doing an excellent job of distracting the predator (me) from the nest. This nest had a single, speckled egg.

They must have just started laying, I thought. Whip-poor-wills lay their two eggs a day apart, so a single egg could mean they only just started. Newer nests are higher risk, with the parents less invested and more likely to abandon from disruption. I needed to be as fast as possible. Check the egg, and leave.

But when I shone my light through the egg, I was surprised. It was not translucent and empty as yet-to-develop eggs are. It was dark, with an air bubble tucked into one end. It was nearly fully developed, just about ready to hatch.

But hey, sometimes whip-poor-wills do only have one egg.

I quickly went to place the egg back down where I had picked it up, amongst the very similar looking clusters of leaves, sticks, and cedar needles. Just as I was putting it down, I noticed it. A fuzzball, small and not much larger than the egg. My first Chicken Nuggets of the Woods, so motionless I hadn't even seen it. It was possibly the cutest thing I had ever seen.

So, even though whip-poor-will chicks are just orange puffballs, it works. The color matches well with their backdrop of leaves and cedar needles, just as the nighthawk chicks match gravel, sand, and stone. They instinctually know to hold still, reducing the chance that predators, especially visual ones like humans, will notice them. I certainly didn't notice this chick, even when picking up the egg next to it (though I am far more adept at finding them now that I have more experience).

Cheers to the Chicken Nuggets of the Woods, the cutest fuzzballs I have ever had the pleasure of watching. I hope that my future stories are full of similar "nuggies," "nuggets," "fuzzballs," and "puffballs" (our most common nicknames for them; we rarely called them chicks until they were in their awkward preteen phase).