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I listened to the thrush, but soon I found that I had only one ear to do it with, for on the other side of me a bird was rapidly approaching with greater and equally persistent clamor. It was a whip-poor-will, seemingly roused to rivalry by the challenge of the thrush. So far as I know the thrush paid no attention to him but simply kept up his song in the birch near by, but the whip-poor-will came up little by little till he seemed almost over my head, and I could hear plainly the hoarse intake of breath between each call. Very brief gasps these intakes were, for the whip-poor-wills fairly tumbled over one another without cessation.

Now the bird went away for a distance, again he came back, but always he kept up his call, while the thrush never wavered from his perch in the birch. A dozen times I waked in the night to find them still at it, and when the gray of dawn finally silenced the whip-poor-will, the thrush let out like a tenor that has just got his second wind. He sang up the dawn and the grand matutinal bird chorus, and the last I heard of him he was still sitting on his perch greeting the gold of the morning sun with melodious uproar.