Of the birds that I see on a regular basis here in Austin, the one that has grown to be my favorite, even more than the feral parakeets, is the nighthawk.
I took this picture from my bike as I rode home. It was well after full dark and the nighthawk was feeding on the insects caught in the glare of the floodlights that stabbed into the sky from a perfectly blank billboard.
You see these birds in virtual flocks anywhere there is a lot of light pollution. In the wild they feed when there’s enough light to catch night insects, mainly in the dusk and dawn. Artificial lighting has extended their feeding period through all hours of the night.
You can see them around the banks of billboards along Airport Boulevard, or the lights in the Highland Mall parking lot, or the floodlights lighting the steeple of Hyde Park Baptist, or flocking above the dome of the State Capitol.
Considering that they have been found nesting on the flat roofs of malls
they are the perfect illustration for my standard rant about the false dichotomy of the natural and unnatural (but I’ll spare you for now).
But they are my favorite local bird because they are part of a larger experience.
Imagine that you are biking home through Hyde Park late at night. The city is dark and quiet, it’s just you and the taco carts. You hear the nighthawk first. It’s an unmistakable sound, audible for several blocks before you see the bird. It’s like the cross between a sparrow’s chirp and the shriek of an eagle. It’s not unlike the thrumming of a taught flagpole rope.
And then you see it. The nighthawk is invisible against the sky until it flaps into the glare of the billboard flood light. It moves like a bat, but the profile looks like a pigeon or a falcon. At the elbow of each wing are short white stripes that look like eyes, or maybe military insignia.
But the best part of all, is that no one else sees them. They are everywhere. They are loud. But only you know what they are. They are your own special event, as you pedal quietly, all alone through the night.