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    Regularly at half-past seven, in one part of the summer, after the evening train had gone by, the whip-poor-wills chanted their vespers for half an hour, sitting on a stump by my door, or upon the ridge-pole of the house.  They would begin to sing almost with as much precision as a clock, within five minutes of a particular time, referred to the setting of the sun, every evening.  I had a rare opportunity to become acquainted with their habits.  Sometimes I heard four or five at once in different parts of the wood, by accident one a bar behind another, and so near me that I distinguished not only the cluck after each note, but often that singular buzzing sound like a fly in a spider's web, only proportionally louder.  Sometimes one would circle round and round me in the woods a few feet distant as if tethered by a string, when probably I was near its eggs.  They sang at intervals throughout the night, and were again as musical as ever just before and about dawn.
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