Common Nighthawks: Peent, Boom!
The Great Outdoors | September 3, 2024
By Jackie Scharfenberg, Retired DNR Naturalist, Photo by Gary L. Clark, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
“Peent, peent!” Where is everybody? They said to meet at the forest lake 30 minutes before sunset. We need to catch our supper of flying insects before flocking to head south for the winter. There they are!
Now I see my fellow common nighthawks (Chordeiles minor) flying just over the treetops. You can’t mistake us with our medium-sized slender bodies, long notched tails, sharply pointed slender wings, distinctive white wing bars, extremely short legs, and sharp, electric call – “peent.”
It’s hard to spy us when we roost on the ground or in a tree due to our cryptic coloration of mottled gray, white, buff, and black. If you want to tell the guys from the girls, look for the male’s white throat patch and tail band.
We fly north for the summer to dine on flying insects and to raise our young. Come fall we head back to South America. This round-trip places us in the league of North American birds with the longest migration routes.
In the spring a male nighthawk puts on a show for his lady. He starts with a dive that includes a loud boom made as wind rushes over his wing feathers. Once on the ground, he rocks back and forth in front of the female spreading and wagging his tail, puffing out his white throat patch, and croaking, “auk, auk, auk.”
Our peak feeding times include dawn and dusk and sometimes on a cloudy day. Our name, “nighthawk”, is a misnomer as we do not hunt at night, nor are we related to hawks. We actually fly in loops and bouts of continuous flapping and sporadic glides making us look more like bats than birds. As we fly low over the treetops, grasslands, and other open areas, we use our eyes to spot and catch insects with our large, cavernous mouths with tiny beaks. We love to feed where large groups of insects swarm, such as, around lights or where large hatches happen over like lakes.
The female choses a nest site on bare ground in open areas such gravel bars, forest openings, sand dunes, flat gravel rooftops, or sparsely vegetated grasslands. After laying two heavily speckled eggs, she incubates them. While she is on the ground with the eggs, the male roosts in a nearby tree. After about 18 days, the active hatchlings emerge covered sparsely with dark gray down above and creamy below. Once hatched, she only leaves them in the evening to feed. In just two days, the hatchlings double their weight. WOW! At 30 days old, they leave their parents. Both parents feed the young regurgitated insects.
The female defends her territory from intruders by hissing or making throaty clucks at them. The male may make booming dives or clap its wings or hiss at the unwelcomed guests.
On a September evening, head outdoors to an open spot to listen for our sharp “peent’ call. Look up and you may be delighted to see a flock of us common nighthawks as we make our
