My neighbourhood has Nighthawks. In the summer I sleep with my head next to a window, and I can hear them going peent peent* as they dart around up above the rowhouses, conducting their nocturnal flycatching activities.
*according to Roger Tory Peterson (actually the cry really does sound like that, which is part of the reason I like them)
awe! I miss the nighthawks - swapped for magpies, which don't peent me to sleep.
You've sure got their flight right. A swooping jerkiness. Like they're wanting to go somewhere but they get distracted by the need to eat more bugs.
I live near the train tracks and I hear them in the morning too - sometimes sounding pretty frantic - aslo saw and heard what I think was a grey jay - info on these birds anyone?
Nighthawks... reminds me of the Tom Waits album. In warmer places they get big fruit bats, those look very cool flying around at night.
I love bats. Someone gave me a bat house, but it has to go high up on a wall facing south. (that I don't have)
I'm crazy about owls too. When I was really young, my older brothers found an injured baby owl. They brought it home, and it spent that summer sitting in a maple tree in our back yard, being hand-fed freshly killed gophers (I suspect my brothers liked the gopher hunting, slicing and dicing just a bit too much ) The back yard was covered in owl shit and the tree was surrounded by children all day long. It flew away in the fall, and,for the next 2 summers, returned for visits. (I suspect that it enjoyed my brothers' catering services)
Gray Jays we don’t see in NYC, but we get Nighthawks, mostly at dawn or dusk; once in a while you find one roosting. Even rarer, we recently had a Whip-poor-will in Central Park; I wrote about one a few years back…
Nice whip-poor-will story, Alex. Been kept awake by those suckers while camping. Nocturnal and loud.
I was raised on Tom Waits' Nighthawks at the Diner, and I still love it.
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My neighbourhood has Nighthawks. In the summer I sleep with my head next to a window, and I can hear them going peent peent* as they dart around up above the rowhouses, conducting their nocturnal flycatching activities.
*according to Roger Tory Peterson (actually the cry really does sound like that, which is part of the reason I like them)
- sally mckay 5-12-2004 7:56 am
awe! I miss the nighthawks - swapped for magpies, which don't peent me to sleep.
- kelly 5-12-2004 12:55 pm
You've sure got their flight right. A swooping jerkiness. Like they're wanting to go somewhere but they get distracted by the need to eat more bugs.
- Jean (guest) 5-12-2004 3:20 pm
I live near the train tracks and I hear them in the morning too - sometimes sounding pretty frantic - aslo saw and heard what I think was a grey jay - info on these birds anyone?
- rebecca 5-12-2004 7:34 pm
Nighthawks... reminds me of the Tom Waits album. In warmer places they get big fruit bats, those look very cool flying around at night.
- Ron (guest) 5-12-2004 8:42 pm
I love bats. Someone gave me a bat house, but it has to go high up on a wall facing south. (that I don't have)
I'm crazy about owls too. When I was really young, my older brothers found an injured baby owl. They brought it home, and it spent that summer sitting in a maple tree in our back yard, being hand-fed freshly killed gophers (I suspect my brothers liked the gopher hunting, slicing and dicing just a bit too much ) The back yard was covered in owl shit and the tree was surrounded by children all day long. It flew away in the fall, and,for the next 2 summers, returned for visits. (I suspect that it enjoyed my brothers' catering services)
- LM (guest) 5-12-2004 10:53 pm
Gray Jays we don’t see in NYC, but we get Nighthawks, mostly at dawn or dusk; once in a while you find one roosting. Even rarer, we recently had a Whip-poor-will in Central Park; I wrote about one a few years back…
- alex 5-13-2004 3:49 am
Nice whip-poor-will story, Alex. Been kept awake by those suckers while camping. Nocturnal and loud.
I was raised on Tom Waits' Nighthawks at the Diner, and I still love it.
- sally mckay 5-13-2004 7:00 am