2,014 Nighthawks - Concord

[rwood...@comcast.net]

Tonight my crew asked me how I could have missed Hawaiian Night last night, the most hallowed date on the nighthawk watcher's calendar.  I explained that I was attending a World Nighthawk Symposium featuring the greatest nighthawk researchers in the world, that I was the keynote speaker, and that I missed last night's count because the applause at the end of my speech lasted longer than I expected.

They didn't buy a word of it.

And these are my friends!

Tonight was truly indescribable.  Nighthawks filled the sky, from one end to the other.  Swirling and swarming in all directions.  Zeke declared it a full-blown "Spectacle", and so it was, as witnessed by about 18 of us.  If you have seen pictures of hawk watching at Veraruz, Mexico, for example, you have an idea of what it looked like.  A flock exceeding 1,000 birds lingered, feeding, for an hour.  If you are wondering how we get these numbers, at one point I scanned the sky and said to Becky Suomala, "there must be 1000 out there count again."  She carefully recounted, by tens, and came up with 1060, so there is some reliability.  We counted until it was too dark to count anymore.  But we agree that our total is conservative, and if we are off by 10%, add another 200 birds, easily.

The bird feeders sold out, thank you Diane, our newest nighthawk fanatic.

Tomorrow will be another good day, not thousands, but hundreds is still worth witnessing.

Rob Woodward

Concord, NH