In recent years I try to spend some time, from mid to late August, looking for migrating Common Nighthawks from the High Ridge Wildlife Management Area. From this vantage point I have a nice view to the east south east toward the city of Fitchburg, Mass. The first few years 2001,2002 and 2003 I was watching for my own curiosity and to compair my numbers with others. Observers such as Fran McMenemy, Bart Kamp, Shiela Carrol and Mark Lynch have tallied excellent numbers (some evenings counting 1000+ nighthawks!) from various points within and near the city of Worcester, Ma.
More recently, I have fed my data into a more formal nighthawk survey, organized by Jeff Slovin and Hank Norwood.
The survey web site can be found here: http://borobirding.net/nighthawks/
To date I have been out 5 times, all from the Westminster section of this WMA, with the following results:
8/12......9
8/14......3
8/21.....11
8/26.....59
8/27....221
It appears the major numbers have a little bit later than previous years, not only from my site but from others within the survey area. Sunday evening appeared to be the beginning of the major migration
2 comments:
Tom,
Good to see you posting again. Intersting topic. Nice picture too! Nighthawks are so cool. The only time I see or hear them here are in the Spring I haven't found any nesting. Thanks for the link to the Nighthawk site.
Vern
Awesome!-I just had my first look at Nighthawks through binoculars a couple of days ago.-I was really impressed by what I saw!
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