Nighthawks take to the skies looking to fill up on insects
What looked like a knob on top of a fence post recently at the Anahuac National Wildlife Refuge east of Houston turned out to be a common nighthawk.
My wife, Kathy, spotted the bird as I was gazing over the watery fields resulting from massive rain storms. About 50 yards down the road was another nighthawk on a fence post, then another and yet another atop fence post after fence post.
They were among many migratory birds arriving from Central and South America, with nighthawks coming from as far away as Ecuador and Colombia. The birds had probably traveled the Mexico and Texas Gulf Coast only to be pummeled by heavy rain storms.
The exhausted nighthawks resting on fence posts barely twitched a feather or raised an eyelid. They didn’t seem to have enough energy to fly off as they usually do when a car stops beside them.
But they’ll recover to sail summer’s evening skies over wildlife refuges, farm fields, towns and urban centers like
Houston. Flying on long, pointed wings bent back at the wrist, the birds will zip through the air in a bounding, zigzagging pattern while chomping down on thousands of insects, such as mosquitoes, moths, mayflies and crop-destroying beetles.
While in flight, the birds can be identified by a prominent white band across the base of the primaries, about a third of the way from the wingtip and bordered by a dark coloration. The tail is slightly forked.
Colloquially called bullbats, common nighthawks are crepuscular birds that feed primarily at dusk and into the early night and again at dawn. They gobble up insects attracted to bright lights over ballparks and shopping centers or over brightly lit cities.
Makes me glad the birds made it through the storm, considering their appetite for the mosqui- toes that will undoubtedly emerge in abundance from the countless pools of rainwater.
The 9-inch-long birds, camouflaged in graybrown plumage with specks of white, roost inconspicuously during the day by perching horizontally on fence posts, tree limbs, bare ground, edges of gravel or rocky roads, and even on gravel rooftops. Males show a white chin, females a buffy chin, and both have tiny beaks and feet.
Populations are seriously declining, mostly because of indiscriminate pesticide spraying to kill mosquitoes that nighthawks likely would have devoured naturally. Pesticides also kill all other flying insects that nighthawks devour, leaving the birds without sufficient food to nourish their chicks, let alone themselves.