The grand procession

“Whoa, it came out of the sky landed just a little south of Moline,” John Fogerty

By JOHN PEPIN
Deputy public information officer
Michigan Department of Natural Resources

It was one of those rare moments when I felt like I was momentarily in a Hollywood motion picture. My character was not unlike that of an unnamed farmer who, in digging with a long-handled spade in his field, happens to glance to the sky as something distracts him. Turning upward, he sees the monster or the flying saucer or whatever it might be and exclaims, “What in good God is that?” In my case, it was evening – just about dusk. I was returning from a fishing trip, trying to get the back door of the house unlocked while carrying my fishing waders over my left shoulder.

I had a pair of blue jeans draped over my arm with my cellphone and reading glasses in my left hand and the handle of a cooler containing ice and fish and my house keys clutched in my right hand.

I held the metal storm door open with my left side and I put the cooler down on the cement to free my right hand to put the key in the dead bolt. In that downward motion, my attention was drawn to the sky above me.

But what I saw didn’t prompt an excited exclamation.

Instead, I stood in hushed silence at what, for me, was a solemn sight.

Time had seemingly stopped dead.

I heard no sound at all.

About 30 feet above the treetops, there were V-shaped forms, gliding and tilting, dipping and soaring. They flew in what seemed like haphazard fashion, but I knew they were chasing airborne insects.

These were common nighthawks.

What made the occasion solemn for me was the realization that these birds were already on their southward migration to South America.

That meant confirmation that despite my best wishes and hopes to the contrary, the grand procession south of some of my favorite birds was well underway.

The chill of autumn and its slow decline and dissolve into white scenes of winter will now no doubt be around just a few more bends down the road. I can almost smell turkey and hear sleigh bells. Ugh.

I had seen nighthawks migrating before, but never over my own backyard. This made it seem like they were coming specifically to say goodbye to me. It was like they understood their importance to me and wanted to let me know that they knew.

To make the occasion even more poignant, interspersed with the nighthawks were small groups of chimney swifts, which like the nighthawks are another of my all-time favorite bird species.

These are birds I’ve known since my earliest childhood days. Nighthawks occasionally could be spotted on the wing over our old backyard during the springtime or summer when they were hunting bugs.

Chimney swifts nested in our neighbor’s brick chimney, and I could watch them fly into it each summer evening, just before dark.

Since 1966, the populations of both species have diminished significantly, at least partially because of changing human habits. Chimney swifts are estimated to have declined by 67%, and common nighthawk numbers have diminished by nearly half (48%).

With humans building fewer brick chimneys and flat, gravel-covered rooftops, chimney swifts and common nighthawks have fewer suitable nesting sites, respectively. In some cases, humans have sought to help remedy this situation by building nesting sites for chimney swifts and installing graveled rooftop sections for nighthawks.

Chimney swifts are found across eastern portions of the United States during summer before migrating to the Amazon region of South America each fall. Common nighthawks range across the entire United States and north as far as the Northwest Territories, flying deep into portions of South America for the winter months.

During migration, both species can be seen traveling in large numbers.

In flight, common nighthawks can be identified by white patches on the undersides of their wings, which are often visible even when the birds are at great height. They also have a white chin patch.

Their “peent” songs, which resemble those of American woodcocks, often indicate the presence of common nighthawks on the wing.

In my experience this week, I only heard one call from any of the nighthawks. They floated over in artfully expressive flight – completely silent.

In all, over the course of 20 minutes or so, I saw roughly 100 nighthawks, with no telling how many I had missed before I noticed the procession or after I’d gone inside the house to clean my brook trout.

The chimney swifts only numbered about 30-40 birds, total. They flew past eating insects along with the nighthawks in squadron flights of about a half-dozen each.

In contrast to the nighthawks, the swifts were constantly chattering while flying over, which is a very common behavior for them. Their black bodies are shaped like cigars, and their curved wings shake in sputtering motion as they fly.

In my earliest years of any kind of awareness or acknowledgement of the presence of birds, common nighthawks and chimney swifts were there among the first species I came to know and enjoy.

When I moved out of state for several years, I encountered white-throated and Vaux’s swifts and even black swifts that nested behind a waterfall in a canyon outside Los Angeles.

There were lesser nighthawks and common poorwills in the deserts in California and buff-collared nightjars in southeastern Arizona that I enjoyed.

But these other, often much rarer, cousins could not compete in my heart, soul and mind with my early Michigan experiences with common nighthawks and chimney swifts.

In years since I have returned home to the Upper Peninsula, I have also become more acquainted with another nighthawk relative, the whip-poor-will. I never encountered them here when I was growing up, but now frequently hear them singing in the evenings while out fishing in the springtime.

Over the past couple of weeks, there have been reports from other areas in the Upper Peninsula of nighthawks migrating south. No doubt flocks are also floating over portions of the Lower Peninsula as well.

Because both these species are most often only seen when they are on the wing, I suspect many people may not recognize them or perhaps have never even seen them or realized what they were beyond “just birds.”

When I saw the nighthawks, I dropped everything I had been holding, shut the back door to the house and stood, watching silently with my arms crossed.

I was in awe of the presence of so many of these birds at one time. Typically, I might see two or three together at most overhead during the spring or summer.

The mental images I captured, some still and others in video-like segments, will last me a very long time.

While I am deeply touched to have been able to arrive home just in time to see the nighthawks and the swifts over my own backyard, I remain a bit unnerved by the experience.

I hope it isn’t a goodbye for good.

No one could have convinced me that Upper Peninsula hibernacula would lose more than 80% of their resident bats, but here we are, on the downside of that disclosure. It’s a staggering loss, with all hibernacula infected with white-nose syndrome.

I know it’s silly to attach human feelings and sensibilities to the patterns and behaviors of wild animals, but I do feel the infrequency of special occurrences like the nighthawk migration above my backyard holds some sort of greater significance somehow.

Like a lot of things that I think and feel these days, I guess time will tell what it all means. For now, there’s watching and waiting and shimmering hope.

Find out more about common nighthawks and chimney swifts at the Cornell Laboratory of Ornithology’s AllAboutBirds.org website.

Check out previous Showcasing the DNR stories in our archive at Michigan.gov/DNRStories. To subscribe to upcoming Showcasing articles, sign up for free email delivery at Michigan.gov/DNREmail.

Note to editors: Contact: John Pepin, Showcasing the DNR series editor, 906-226-1352. Accompanying photos and a text-only version of this story are available below for download. Caption information follows. Credit Michigan Department of Natural Resources, unless otherwise noted.

Text-only version of this story.

Migration: A group of common nighthawks is shown migrating south along M-95 in Dickinson County.

Nighthawk: A common nighthawk is shown from Dickinson County.