In Orange County’s scrub country, the nights are ruled by quiet, creeping forms that specialize in navigating a low-light environment. One of them is the common poorwill. Like other nocturnal species, ...

As any birder will tell you, the best time to observe birds is early morning. But to get a glimpse of the delightfully weird-looking common poorwill, you’ll have to be a night owl. Denizens of ...

Michael Palin presents the common poorwill from an Arizona desert. In the dead of night, loud calls pierce the stillness on a moonlit track, a small shape suddenly sprouts wings and flutters into the ...

The last thing the staff and customers of Lowe's in Bend expected to see last week was a lone common poorwill (a bird very closely related to a nighthawk) standing in the middle of the garden center.

Called holchko, or “sleeping one,” by the Hopi, poorwills have the startling ability to cut their oxygen use by 97% and survive through the winter on just 10 grams of stored fat. Though known to the ...