Common Nighthawks, Chordeiles minor, circle around in long, swirling loops when courting mates. They call repeatedly with a nasal "peent", interrupted occasionally by a short dive, tucking their wings in to create a spectacular "boom" as the air rushes through their feathers. Being a largely crepuscular behavior, it is more often heard rather than seen. It much of rural North America this is a twilight sound of early Dawn and late Dusk.
In one of my favorite places to record, the arid Seep Lakes of Central Washington, the Nighthawks cruise low, often below the lips of the coulees that dot the region. Their booms and calls echo off the canyon walls. One evening, on a "rooftop coulee" (a coulee on a stack), this little bird buzzed me for over an hour. Here's just a tiny snippet.
Something I hadn't noticed until recently is the call they make at the start of a dive is staccato, slightly punctuated, as if they're saying "Hey! Lookitthis!" or maybe "Wheee!"
Also on #YouTube Nighthawk On TheRooftop
https://youtu.be/dJEsOaGgPBI where you can see fancy spectrogram squiggles and a picture of the coulee
Image credit:
"Common nighthawk at Seedskadee National Wildlife Refuge Wyoming" by USFWS Mountain Prairie is marked with Public Domain Mark 1.0. To view the terms, visit https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/mark/1.0/?ref=openverse.
