Common Nighthawk
Chordeiles minor
"cool facts" 4
On warm summer evenings, Common Nighthawks roam the skies over treetops, grasslands, and cities. Their sharp, electric peent call is often the first clue they’re overhead. In the dim half-light, these long-winged birds fly in graceful loops, flashing white patches out past the bend of each wing as they chase insects. These fairly common but declining birds make no nest. Their young are so well camouflaged that they’re hard to find, and even the adults seem to vanish as soon as they land.
On summer evenings, keep an eye and an ear out for the male Common Nighthawk’s dramatic “booming” display flight. Flying at a height slightly above the treetops, he abruptly dives for the ground. As he peels out of his dive (sometimes just a few meters from the ground) he flexes his wings downward, and the air rushing across his wingtips makes a deep booming or whooshing sound, as if a racecar has just passed by. The dives may be directed at females, territorial intruders, and even people.
The Common Nighthawk’s impressive booming sounds during courtship dives, in combination with its erratic, bat-like flight, have earned it the colloquial name of “bullbat.” The name “nighthawk” itself is a bit of a misnomer, since the bird is neither strictly nocturnal—it’s active at dawn and dusk—nor closely related to hawks.
Many Late Pleistocene fossils of Common Nighthawks, up to about 400,000 years old, have been unearthed between Virginia and California and from Wyoming to Texas.
Common Nighthawks, which have one of the longest migration routes of all North American birds, sometimes show up far out of range. They have been recorded in Iceland, Greenland, the Azores, the Faroe Islands, and multiple times on the British Isles.
The oldest Common Nighthawk on record was 10 years old.
Conservation status 5
Populations of common nighthawks are declining. This decrease may be attributed to a variety of human activities. Indiscriminate pesticide use in cities and farmlands affects populations locally. In urban areas, replacement of gravel roofs with rubber roofs has reduced nesting sites for these populations. Increased predation is also a factor in general population decline. Urban nesters are especially vulnerable to predation by housecats. Common nighthawks are also killed by vehicles when roosting or feeding along roadways.
US Migratory Bird Act: protected
US Federal List: no special status
CITES: no special status
State of Michigan List: no special status
IUCN Red List of Threatened Species: least concern
Sources and Credits
- (c) Greg Lasley, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC), uploaded by Greg Lasley
- (c) Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren, some rights reserved (CC BY), https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/0a/Common_Nighthawk_%2814605341423%29.jpg
- (c) Andy Reago & Chrissy McClarren, some rights reserved (CC BY), https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/e1/Common_Nighthawk_%2814585240355%29.jpg
- Adapted by Natalie LaScala from a work by Public Domain, http://eol.org/data_objects/27672593
- (c) The Regents of the University of Michigan and its licensors, some rights reserved (CC BY-NC-SA), http://eol.org/data_objects/31386122
