I wrote this short essay as part of the Montana Master Naturalist course I participated in last Fall. I hope you enjoy it. You can also listen to it, as it aired on Montana Public Radio, HERE.

—Jason P. Schein

I’ve often heard birders mention nighthawks as being among their favorites, and truth be told, there is much to like. They’re masters of camouflage, which keeps them safe while nesting on bare rocky ground. They voraciously consume countless flying insects, a feat that always propels any species to the top of my “top ten” lists. And their bodies look as if they were designed by Dr. Seuss himself: extra long, narrow, recurved wings keep aloft a comically small abdomen, and a truly enormous mouth is somehow hidden behind a tiny beak. It’s easy to see how the nighthawks’ idiosyncrasies make them a crowd favorite, but what I love most about them are the cherished memories they resurrect.

As a young boy, I spent a lot of time at my grandfather’s property, not too far from where I grew up. These thirty-eight country acres in the heart of Alabama felt like my own personal nature reserve, with plenty of room to roam and explore, search for all manner of critters, and daydream about all the things feral young boys can imagine. Each evening you could find me on the dock, casting a line, ready to reel in the next big lunker. This, too, is when the nighthawks revealed themselves. Their scythe-like wings silhouetted against a softening sky, slicing through the thick, soupy air, in erratic, bat-like patterns on the hunt for the hoards of bugs. Southern summer nights are a symphony of cicadas and katydids, tree frogs and bullfrogs, but even above the clamor of those and countless other species, I could make out the distinct call of nighthawks – something between a long chirp and a short screech. A melody in the dark. Those evenings by the pond with my friends, the nighthawks, became synonymous in my mind not just with nature, but of a special kind of freedom that came only with summer, and perhaps only to kids growing up in the 80s, before the advent of helicopter parenting. Those sights and sounds were full-body experiences, transformed by time into the most ingrained of memories, which, like the nighthawks’ song, linger as something between haunting and enchanting.

Many years after the last of those summer nights at my grandfather’s faded into the distant past, came another encounter with nighthawks that remains among my most precious pieces of nostalgia. On a late summer evening, in the desert at the foot of the Pryor Mountains, near Bridger, without another soul for miles, I let my son drive for the very first time. From my new perch I could see not only one very happy fourteen-year-old boy, but also a few nighthawks taking flight in the cool air of twilight. Within minutes, though, a few nighthawks became dozens, and then hundreds, then hundreds more, mile after dusty mile. The skies were positively electric, throbbing with the convulsive and lurching beats of thousands of wings. This grand and frantic phenomenon marked the start of the fall migration, en masse, to as far away as Argentina; a spectacle made even more special because at all other times of the year, these birds are almost exclusively solitary. We just happened to be in the right place, at the right time.

I don’t even know if Jackson remembers the nighthawks’ performance that evening. To him, that night was, first and foremost, the “first time he got to drive a car,” though I hope he also felt at least a little bit of the freedom I enjoyed at my grandfather’s farm. But what I love most about that night is experiencing one of nature’s greatest pageants with one very happy young man who was growing up way too fast. Another cherished memory that, like the nighthawk’s call, is both haunting and enchanting.

Of Nighthawks & Memories