Unlimited edition. 18 x 24 inch, museum-quality poster on matte paper.

Of the bird species I grew up with on the mid-Atlantic coast, only the Chuck-will’s-widow and Eastern Whip-poor-will rival the whimbrel for “coolest name.” (Maybe it’s a “w” thing? 🤷)

The origin of the whimbrel’s name is uncertain. Some historians and naturalists believe it’s a combination of “whimper” and “el” intended to describe one of the bird’s calls. That’s possible, but the particular call in question is just one of a ranging repertoire, and it isn’t the call we most often hear, in any case. The intriguing common name is just half the story, though. The scientific binomial, Numenius phaeopus, translates as either “dark-countenanced new moon” or “dark-footed new moon.” The “new moon” piece is said to describe the shape of the whimbrel’s long, decurved bill, but – and call me a stickler, if you like – the face of a true new moon is dark, shrouded in shadow, with no crescent aspect. 🌑  Still, I like the conveyed mystery of “dark-countenanced new moon.”

This color column is based on the American subspecies, also called the Hudsonian whimbrel. It’s a long-distance migrant, breeding in the Arctic and flying to Central and South America for the winter. One especially famous whimbrel – famous within bird nerd circles, at least – was dubbed Hope. Hope was captured and fitted with a satellite transmitter on the coast of Virginia in 2009, then tracked over 50,000+ miles as she migrated between her breeding area on the Mackenzie River in western Canada and her wintering site on St. Croix, British Virgin Islands. If you’re not impressed with the migration commute, consider this: some whimbrels migrating along the Eastern seaboard have been documented making nonstop overwater flights of 2,500 miles! 🤯

Note: These archival poster prints feature rich, appealing colors. I encourage customers to take care in handling them until they are framed/protected for display; the darker colors on the matte paper can be scratched. They ship rolled, so customers need to flatten them before framing (or have their framer do so).

Charitable Sales Model: Whenever one of these poster prints is purchased, a charitable contribution equal to 10% of the print’s cost (or $3.60) is made to a nonprofit working to tackle environmental or social challenges. Read more about my charitable sales model here.