A thrilling return from the far reaches of South America

Common Nighthawk, photo provided by Cornell Lab of Ornithology

This is the 40th of 50 Days of Chicago Nature. Read previous posts here.
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Early summer means the return of the buzzy peent call of the Common Nighthawk. Neither completely nocturnal nor a raptor species, nighthawks are a member of the Nightjar family that also includes Whip-poor-wills. A bird to look for at dawn and also at dusk, nighthawks swoop and dart with a batlike flight.

Author Edward Abbey writes of the nighthawk in his 1968 classic Desert Solitaire, set in what is now Arches National Park in Utah:

"They feed in the twilight between evening and night and again in that similar twilight, unknown to most Americans, between dawn and sunrise, at which times aerial insects are at their most abundant. In my sack on the cot out back of the trailer, I am awakened many a morning by the sound of their wild cries and thrilling plunges through the air."

The Common Nighthawk, a bird that winters in South America, a bird of remote deserts, of grasslands, of urban rooftops and suburban neighborhoods, is appearing now all across the Chicago Wilderness region.