It is a bad thing to want. At least when it comes to birds. At least when it comes to seeing specific birds. At least when it comes to me.
There’s a thing in birding called chasing, which, somewhat obviously, is when you make an effort to see a specific bird, usually a rarity, which may or may not stick around. Most of the time it requires somewhere between a bit and a lot of driving. I’ve done it quite a few times. Sometimes I see what I’m looking for, though more often it seems that I don’t. (I’ve never actually done the success/failure math.)
But, honestly, chasing is my least favorite kind of birding. I mean, I love a good birding adventure, but I’d rather explore a new place and see what there is to see, as opposed to it being so goal-oriented.
This may come off as smug and spiritually superior to some, especially to some hardcore listers – I’ve gotten into some really strange arguments with listers about this online – but I don’t think it is. Even when I see a bird I’m looking for, I generally feel ambiguous about it. I can check it off a list, but I’m just not that interested in the list. Different strokes, and all that.
Still, like the urge to eat Spam, I do occasionally feel the chasing impulse, follow it and then kind of regret it later.
It wasn’t the urge to chase that came over me yesterday, but rather something chase-adjacent.
It started with a text from Chris Bergh, telling me he was on a boat off Big Pine and saw a flock of about 100 common nighthawks fly over, heading from northwest to southeast. Later I got a text from Loren Ilvedson telling me he’d been fishing off Cudjoe and had seen two flocks of about 120 nighthawks each. He even sent some video of birds swirling around maybe 100 feet above the water.
And then there were the numbers from the Florida Keys Hawkwatch at Curry Hammock State Park in Marathon. They didn’t have any common nighthawks in the first hour of the count, but they had 57 in the second hour. There were none for the next three hours, then 512 between 1 and 2 p.m. and 1,861 between 2 and 3 p.m. They crossed over 3,000 total nighthawks just after 5 p.m., and as the sun went down and storms approached, they ended the day seeing 3,527 — an insane number of nighthawks.
Despite the fact that nighthawks are not hawks – they are insectivores in the nightjar family – the folks at the hawkwatch try to count every bird that passes, not just raptors. Common nighthawks are one of the two species of nighthawks that breed in the Keys (the other is the Antillean nighthawk) but you don’t see flocks of them in the breeding season, just individuals flying around, feeding by flying in the unpredictable zig zag patterns that allow them to scoop up bugs in their open mouths.
It’s not that I haven’t seen flocks of common nighthawks migrating. I vividly remember seeing my first flock, up in Everglades National Park, ironically enough while I was chasing a black-faced grassquit. I’d taken a walk through a band of slash pines at the edge of the Long Key Campground, when suddenly there was a flock of about 100 of them, silent as ninjas.
They weren’t flying the twisting random trajectory they follow when feeding, but instead were a loose alliance, a comfortable mob, a group of birds traveling together on the same itinerary, though without the lockstep (lockflap?) synchronized movements of, say, starlings or homing pigeons. The whole scene probably lasted about 20 seconds. The ease and fluidity of their movements has haunted me ever since, in the best way.
I’ve seen similar flocks two or three times around Key West, but it’s never been something you can predict or chase after. It’s lightning in a bottle.
But seeing the numbers accrue from the hawkwatch yesterday (you can follow their counts live on trektellen.org) I started to covet the sight of a flock of migrating common nighthawks. With so many birds, there seemed to be a chance.
It was too late to drive up to Curry Hammock, so I went up on the roof of The Studios of Key West and sat for two hours, staring into the open sky with no luck.
The next morning, I watched the numbers start to build at the hawkwatch. They counted 310 nighthawks by 9 a.m., close to 1,000 by 2 p.m., when I finally managed to pull out of the driveway and head up there.
Mariah Hryniewich, the lead counter at the Florida Keys Hawkwatch, was standing at the top of the stairs when I got there, scanning the sky. It was hot and bright. The clouds, as Tom Waits would say, were like headlines on a new front-page sky – long rows out over both the Gulf and the Atlantic.
Mariah said that now that the sun was out, things seemed to have slowed down. The last nighthawks she’d seen was a group of about 40 a half hour before.
There was a slow movement of osprey, and I caught sight of a distant, fast-moving dot, which turned out to be my first peregrine falcon of the season. And I had a chance to meet Delaney Cassidy and Charlie Trent, fun, enthusiastic, young birders who are the two other counters for the season. (One of them may also be something of a molluskophile.)
The five o’clock, end-of-the-watch-period hour passed with no more nighthawks. The three of them hung out for another hour, trying to help me see some nighthawks, with no luck.
I did get the fine consolation prize of a small kettle of nine swallow-tailed kites spinning slowly through the sky as if they were circling some kind of invisible maypole. (The swallow-tails put the count at 2,827 for the season. They are hoping to clear 3,000.)
The sun was in my eyes as I crossed the Seven Mile Bridge, which isn’t the worst fate in the world. By the time I hit Bahia Honda the sky was in peak, full glory, all Halloween orange and streaky clouds. Another consolation prize.
I stopped to take a photo, and while I was walking back to my car, I caught sight of something, a shadow coming in from the north. It flew close above me on a power glide, crossed the road, dropped down into the park.
A common nighthawk. It might have only been .0201126307% of the number seen at the hawkwatch in the previous two days, but it was consolation prize number three.
I was in a pretty good mood as I rolled onto the Spanish Harbor Channel Bridge to Big Pine. There was just enough light to see the shape of the world, to appreciate the last embers of the day. Which is when I saw another dark silhouette coming in from the north, then another and another, a small armada, a bona fide flock, zipping across the road, one at a time, nighthawk after nighthawk. I counted 35 by the time I hit the far side of the bridge. No doubt more continued to cross behind me.
It wasn’t a consolation prize. It was a damn full-on prize. I didn’t feel ambiguous about it at all.
