Visiting the stone bridge at Melville Park proved quite productive Friday night as a team effort by Byron Young, Patrice Domeischel, and I produced 60+ nighthawks feeding actively over the two ponds in the span of an hour and a half.
Their behavior was interesting. For the first 45 minutes or so the birds stayed high, hawking for insects several hundred feet above the ground. Toward dusk, however, they descended to the point they were below the tree-line, only 5-20 feet above the water surface. For the first time ever I saw a nighthawk drink on the wing as it skimmed the pond's surface. Byron and I agreed we could discern a definite influx of birds coming in from the north, from Conscience Bay, and to a lesser extent from the east. Given this, watching for nighthawks from the Old Field Lighthouse might prove especially productive, if permission could be granted to park along the road. John Turner -- NYSbirds-L List Info: http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsWELCOME http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsRULES http://www.NortheastBirding.com/NYSbirdsSubscribeConfigurationLeave.htm ARCHIVES: 1) http://www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]/maillist.html 2) http://www.surfbirds.com/birdingmail/Group/NYSBirds-L 3) http://birdingonthe.net/mailinglists/NYSB.html Please submit your observations to eBird: http://ebird.org/content/ebird/ --
