Tipped off by a phone message from Carl Safina, who had seen Common Nighthawks foraging over the Seatuket Mill Pond a little earlier in the day, I headed down around 5:00 o'clock to see for myself. For the next 1 1/2 hours I watched anywhere from 4-13 nighthawks feeding over the two ponds, with most concentrating over the Mill Pond. There was a huge hatch of small aerial insects and the nighthawks were feeding incessantly, along with varying sized flocks of tree swallows ranging from several swallows to a hundred or more.
What was nice about the event was that the birds were routinely skimming low over the water and since I was positioned on the stone bridge was able to look down on them and see their full coloration much better than the typical view of a nighthawk - a dark silhouette against the sky. One time a nighthawk came so close to the water surface it forced a gadwall to dive under the water. A little later one of the nighthawks flew toward me and proceeded to land on the bridge landing and resting on a stone top of a bridge abutment about 20 feet away. It stayed there for a minute before being frightened off by a couple walking over the bridge. As dusk descended the nighthawks left except for one that stayed with it. As I walked to the car a Great Horned Owl called several times from the wooded portion of the Frank Melville Preserve, a nice way to cap off a most enjoyable experience. Thanks Carl! John Turner -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/nysbirds-l@cornell.edu/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
