6:06 a.m. 59 degrees, wind NNE 2 mph. Sky: not much happening (visually); overcast and flat; clouds haven't coalesced into much of anything, a shapeless washed-out blue, 2-F stops overexposed. Woods dim and foreboding, more from tripping over logs and rocks, stumbling over a ledge, than anything else. Permanent streams: upper, silent and thirsty, ease to wetlands; lower, scarcely damp, time for a funeral. Wetlands: two nighthawks rowing back and forth the length of the marsh on long falconesque wings, arched deeply back like stroking crew paddles; their broad white wing bars, one per wing, just beyond the crook, flash in a semaphore flight. A pair of old friends. Pond: silent, still, coffee brown.
AOR: two robins and wood thrush.
Amid scores of chips and peeps . . . three pewees whistle. Perched out of view on the far side of the marsh, a red-shouldered hawk calls, a bold, emphatic scream that no blue jay ever quite perfects. Red-breasted nuthatches, less than yesterday, busy themselves in the pines.
When I return home, I look at old-field notes. On 24 May 1983, a male nighthawk above Dartmouth College's Wilson Hall and the Hopkins Center. Then, later that week, warm weather ushed more nighthawks through campus—six or seven gathered in the glow of Baker Library Tower, circling, circling, circling, mouths open, trolling for moths. One male rose beyond the range of floodlights and then plunged down with an audible snap. I stood, mid-Green, a voyeur fixed on the courtship of another species. First one nighthawk, then a second flew straight up into the blackness and dove earthward beyond the library like a kamikaze pilot.
Only the male nighthawk plunged for love. Each time he reached the end of his dive and checked his descent, his stiff primary flight feathers—long and tapered extending from the outer half of the wing—snapped and vibrated like a tuning fork. The air boomed with love notes. The object of his attention sat like a stone on the gravel roof of Kiewit Computer Center or the old Mary Hitchcock Medical center, watching, listening, internalizing the performance of each participant. After several swoops toward the female, the male landed, out of view, next to her. Fanning his white-banded tail, rocking back and forth, and inflating his white throat, he would try to seduce her.
But the courtship ritual appeared only to bore the female, who flew away without acknowledgment or fanfare. Not to be denied, the male pursued her, back into the lights of Baker Tower, calling incessantly, peent, peent, peent. The entire performance, repeated more than a dozen times, eventually ended, either that night or a few days later, in connubial bliss on Kiewit. Once their bond solidified, the female laid two eggs on the roof and began incubation, and her mate, fresh from his nuptial triumph, continued diving and booming until the eggs hatched.
That was then. Now, whenever I cross the green on a spring evening, I still look north, hoping to see amorous male nighthawks rising and diving against the incandescence of Baker Library Tower. Sadly, I'm always disappointed. Nighthawks abandoned their nest sites on the gravel roofs of Kiewit and the old hospital, in 1990, have vanished from the summer skies of downtown Hanover, Lebanon, and Windsor. Spring nights have lost expression and a visual feast. I lost more: old friend nests elsewhere.
Thankfully, nighthawks still pass through the Connecticut River valley in late summer, feasting on flying ants and thrilling everyone who wanders in the twilight.