Oh, I hope Brenda and Steven's optimism about nighthawks is justified.
They are a favorite species of mine, and I've watched their steady,
steep decline here--I live not far from Brenda and Steve--and elsewhere
over the years. I won't pass along sad musings about this dramatic
species, but below is part of my entry about it in my book about local
birds, intended as a neutral view.
--Bill Whan

Common Nighthawk   Chordeiles minor*.  In 1874, Kirtland et al. (263)
wrote that it “deposits its eggs on the bare ground, often in the middle
of a field,” and in Wheaton’s day too nests of nighthawks were usually
found here in settings such as fallow fields; an incubated egg set of
two collected 6/12/1890 (OSU Museum #E3311) in Franklin County, for
example, was found in “a slight depression in the ground.”  Bales’s egg
collection at OSUM includes 16 sets collected from ground nests dating
from as late as 1913; the seventeenth, from 1931, was found on a roof.
Nighthawks nested in abandoned quarries on Kelleys Island in Lake Erie
as recently as 1954 (Dexter 1956:13).  As early as 1903, however, Dawson
(343) was to write “[i]n Columbus it is a familiar feature, hawking
fearlessly above High Street, and nesting, as in many other cities, upon
the tarred and gravelled roofs of flat-topped buildings.”  Such roofs
had gradually come into wide use after the Civil War.  Hicks (1935a:156)
pronounced nighthawks present, relying on such a nesting strategy, in
nearly every Ohio city with a human population of more than 5,000, often
absent in smaller communities.  Nests in towns grow scarcer every year,
at least in part because gravel ballast is evermore seldom employed on
roofs and flying insects have become less numerous in cities; increased
egg depredation by urban crows and raccoons is a factor as well.  Other
than brooding females, generally roosts, its long axis parallel to a
limb, in trees; Trautman (1940:281) wrote they much preferred black
walnuts and honey locusts for the purpose, trees whose bark colorations
most closely matched those of their plumage.  Spring migrant flocks tend
to number in the dozens at best, moving at higher altitudes than in
fall.  Usually arrives by 5-10 May.  Very early local records come from
4/16/1899 (OSUM specimen #882), 4/18/2011 (fide M. Skinner) and
4/19/1985 (OC 8(1):23).  The highest twilight counts of fall movements
usually come from late August-early September, and include a description
of circle-soaring by “at least several thousand” over the OSU campus
9/3/1968 (Mueller 1970), 3000+ on 9/3/1976 (Thomson 1983:206), and 2500
on 9/3/1992 (OC 16(1):21). Later in fall, 224 were observed 10/3/2006
(OC 30(1):20).  One entered the OSU campus’s main library on 10/22/1965
(WCB 11:46).  Record late was one seen and heard calling on 11/20/1975
at High St. and Morse Rd. (J. Stahl, WCB 1(20-21):42).  Odd-looking
local fall specimens from OSUM were sent to H. C. Oberholser during the
1930s and ‘40s (see for example Aldrich 1936), who identified several as
western subspecies such as hesperis (#7464, 9/3/1936), howelli (#7487,
8/28/1936), and sennetti (#12021, 8/31/1938).

On 7/20/2015 7:31 AM, Steven Pendleton wrote:
> Hi all, Our house is along a railroad corridor 2 blocks north of
> Weber Rd. and Summit St. When we first moved here in 1999 Common
> Nighthawks were a constant sight and sound on summer evenings. About
> 7 years ago the warehouse on the other side of the tracks cut down
> the trees that grew behind it and after that the only nighthawks
> we've seen have been in migration. A few nights ago my wife and I
> returned from a late evening meal and she heard a nighthawk. We
> looked and found a pair flitting high over the alley behind our
> house. Since then we've seen and heard them every night. The constant
> rain and prolific mosquitos have kept us indoors every evening so
> they've probably been here all along and we just missed them.
>
> Brenda Rushka and Steven Pendleton

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