Nighthawk over Kemptville Creek

[Frederick W. Schueler]

BENEDICTUS CHORDEILES

May your life be like a Nighthawk:
Invisible by day
Tearing the dusk like fabric
Safer without a nest
Wings finer than a dove’s
Swift and gentle moth-eater:

Spirit of the ground
Spirit of the sky
Over Toronto or the Chilcotin

- Anahim Lake, B.C., 26 July 1989 (written before we came home to find
them gone from eastern Ontario)

Since then, we've only seen Nighthawks 4 times in Grenville County, but
this evening there was one over Kemptville Creek below the Prescott
Street bridge. This is presumably a migrant.

The creek was impressively high & fast, burbling into the dock on the N
shore, and sending big clots of foam downstream.

fred.
------------------------------------------------------------
---------Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad ------------
Fragile Inheritance Natural History - https://fragileinheritance.ca/
6 St-Lawrence Street Bishops Mills, RR#2 Oxford Station, Ontario K0G 1T0
on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44.87156° N 75.70095° W
------------------------------------------------------------

[rmb...@istar.ca]

I miss my nighthawks. I heard one back in spring a few times and was
hoping it would nest here, but haven't heard it all summer. In the
70s, 80s and 90s when I was fishing in the bay on calm afternoons and
evenings there would be about 8 or 10 of them flying overhead, and
occasionally make that boom/whirring sound with their wings. At least
I heard a whippoorwill call a couple nights ago.

That time of year again, and with this cold spell, very few birds
singing in the morning. I miss waking up to the chorus.

Rose-Marie

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[Robert Lee]

Yesterday (August 26th) I counted 166 Nighthawks passing overhead in a 10- to 15-minute period at 6 p.m.. They were heading approximately northeast, crossing Darling Road (about 1 km E of Tatlock) at not quite right angles. In a front about 300 m wide, they passed singly and in diffuse groups of a dozen, at about three times the height of the tallest trees in sight, so at about 200 feet (60 m) up.

I had been watching casually for 20 minutes and noticing other birds in the fencerow on the NE side of my friends’ home before the first Nighthawk appeared overhead and flew on. I knew it on sight by its long, narrow wings and its wingstrokes; after a few minutes several flew over close enough to see the white marks on the wings. Their flight was quite direct. They were all silent. There could have been more to the south beyond my vision, but there were definitely none in the sky north of the house, close at hand.

Northeast at this point is approximately parallel to the valley of Indian River, the watercourse being ab0ut 500 m north of the house, but the birds’ course and the creek would converge and cross not very far ahead.

I continued to watch casually for another half-hour after the last one without seeing any more.

For 30 years, August 26th has been imprinted in my mind as the day when the Nighthawks leave. And it seems to have been so again.

Robert E. Lee

> On Aug 21, 2024, at 10:56 PM, Frederick W. Schueler <bck...@istar.ca> wrote:
>
> Since[1989] we've only seen Nighthawks 4 times in Grenville County, but this evening there was one over Kemptville Creek below the Prescott Street bridge. This is presumably a migrant.

>
> The creek was impressively high & fast, burbling into the dock on the N shore, and sending big clots of foam downstream.
>
> fred.
> ------------------------------------------------------------
> ---------Frederick W. Schueler & Aleta Karstad ------------
> Fragile Inheritance Natural History - https://fragileinheritance.ca/
> 6 St-Lawrence Street Bishops Mills, RR#2 Oxford Station, Ontario K0G 1T0
> on the Smiths Falls Limestone Plain 44.87156° N 75.70095° W
> ------------------------------------------------------------
>

[rmb...@istar.ca]

A couple of them made it down here just north of Perth Road Village.
Had my dog out for her pee around 7:00 p.m., saw a couple of
nighthawks circling over the pine trees. I'm wondering if they were
chasing through a cloud of midges or other insects.

Rose-Marie

> https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/naturelist/C4674F7F-DA93-44E9-BF26-62061A94D888%40magma.ca.
>

[Frederick W. Schueler]

On 27-Aug-24 9:12 p.m., rmb...@istar.ca wrote:
> A couple of them made it down here just north of Perth Road Village.
> Had my dog out for her pee around 7:00 p.m., saw a couple of nighthawks
> circling over the pine trees.  I'm wondering if they were chasing
> through a cloud of midges or other insects.

* and on 22 August we saw one over a field SW of Heckston.

fred.
=====================================