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Re: nighthawk? (fwd) also, a book



Hi Carolinabirders,

Allison shared a description of the bird she *saw*, and it really does
sound like a nighthawk; her words are forwarded below. However, she is not
completely sure the noise she is hearing is from the same bird. If the two
are one and the same, it must be a Common Nighthawk, and so an incredibly
out-of-season one. However, if the call is instead a more seasonable
American Woodcock, isn't the nighthawk actually more likely to be a
Lesser, which occurs rarely but regularly in south Florida in the winter,
and is usually silent away from its breeding grounds? Or perhaps even an
Antillean? No idea where that one normally spends the winter, but I do
vaguely recall something about one showing up on the Outer Banks at some
point in the past...

An on-line friend of mine just published his first book, consisting of
near-poetic essays, the vast majority of them discussing various aspects
of flying critters such as birds, dragonflies, and butterflies. Folks on
the odonate listservs are probably already familiar with Herschel Raney's
gifts with the English language. Puts me to shame. Anyone who's looking
for great reading material, check it out:
http://iuniverse.com/bookstore/book_detail.asp?isbn=0%2D595%2D26708%2D4

One last thing: a fellow Duke grad student informed me of a recent
research paper indicating that a European bat called the Greater Noctule
is actually a major predator on migratory birds! The abstract and citation
are pasted below, after Allison's description of her nighthawk. I wonder
if any of our American bats engage in such behavior?

Good birding,

Josh


Joshua S. Rose
Duke University
Department of Biology (Zoology, R.I.P.)

jsr6@duke.edu
http://www.duke.edu/~jsr6/

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Thu, 13 Feb 2003 14:54:47 -0500
From: allisonbhic@bellsouth.net
To: Joshua S. Rose <jsr6@duke.edu>
Subject: Re: nighthawk?

Josh,
Yep, I saw the white wing patches in broad daylight. Weeks following the
visual I started to hear what sounds just like a nighthawk. I am
beginning to think that the bird I am hearing (nasally "peent" sometimes
followed by quick and short chuckles) is a woodcock simply because I
never remember night hawks following the "peent" call with chuckles. But
the bird that my dog scared up a few weeks ago was definitely not a
woodcock. It not only had the white wing patches, stubby face (short
beak) and long tail, but it flitted and then soared just like the
nighthawks do in the summer. And its wings were definitely long and
pointy with the bird being larger than a whip or chucks (I have a whip in
my freezer right now). I see so many nighthawks in the summer (very
close-up as they sit on sand fence posts along the road), I didn't even
doubt that this bird was a night hawk until I found out they aren't seen
anywhere around here in the winter.

I will keep a look out for this bird, it definitely hangs around my yard
(secondary dunes). It is not rare for migrants to stay Bald Head Island
through the winter - we are a sub-tropical island. But I had no idea that
a nighthawk has never been recorded in S.C. or N.C. during winter months.
What do I do if I can confirm that this bird is a nighthawk?

Thanks for you help and interest!

Allison Sill
Environmental Education Coordinator
Bald Head Island Conservancy

===
Bat predation on nocturnally migrating birds
Carlos Ibáñez*,dagger , Javier Juste*, Juan L. García-Mudarra*, and Pablo
T. Agirre-MendiDagger
Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 98, 9700 - 9702, (2001).

Bat predation on birds is a very rare phenomenon in nature. Most
documented reports of bird-eating bats refer to tropical bats that
occasionally capture resting birds. Millions of small birds concentrate
and cross over the world's temperate regions during migration, mainly at
night, but no nocturnal predators are known to benefit from this enormous
food resource. An analysis of 14,000 fecal pellets of the greater noctule
bat (Nyctalus lasiopterus) reveals that this species captures and eats
large numbers of migrating passerines, making it the only bat species so
far known that regularly preys on birds. The echolocation characteristics
and wing morphology of this species strongly suggest that it captures
birds in flight.