Common Nighthawk

About the Common Nighthawk

The Common Nighthawk is the bird behind that buzzy "peent" call overhead on warm Texas evenings - a slim, long-winged shape sweeping and swooping high over towns, ballfields, and lakeshores at dusk. In good light the bold white slash across each pointed wing gives it away instantly.<br><br>Nighthawks are aerial insect-eaters, trawling the sky with their tiny bill hiding an enormous gaping mouth. A single bird can put away hundreds of flying insects in an evening, which makes the species a welcome summer neighbor anywhere the porch lights draw bugs. By day they vanish, sitting lengthwise along a branch or flat on gravel where their mottled gray-brown plumage looks exactly like bark or stone.<br><br>Displaying males add one of the strangest sounds in Texas birding: at the bottom of a steep dive, air rushing through the wing feathers produces a hollow booming "voom." They nest on bare ground and flat gravel rooftops, asking nothing but open sky.<br><br>Late summer is the spectacle, when migrating nighthawks gather into loose flocks that stream south by the dozens or hundreds - one of the signs that fall is coming to Texas, even when the thermometer disagrees.