We are not seeing, or at least not reporting, many remarkable fall migrants, judging by contributions to this list. To learn that 68+ people have trudged the same path to see the same piping plover tells us a lot less about birds than about birders, for example. We're only at the edge of migration, and one can hope that healthy numbers of birds moving south will be reported. Barring some catastrophe, far more warblers pass through in spring than in fall, let's not forget. The ABA's Birding News web site has a feature at the top of its page-- http://birding.aba.org/search.php --and I used it to discover recent reports of nighthawks. There were 568 posts reporting common nighthawks--and some lessers--in the ABA reporting area. Some reports estimated flyover flocks of 10 thousand or more. One report, not the largest, gave 9490 birds seen yesterday over 20 minutes from an observer's front yard in Minnesota's Lake County. As far as we know, migrating nighthawks often clump into foraging groups on migration to South America. Those that move during the day may fly high enough that they aren't seen or reported; this is the case for nearly all of the northbound birds in the spring. Most of those we see from the ground are the larger low-altitude early-evening flocks as they feed on insects along their way in autumn; nighthawks sleep by night, of course. Large numbers of migrants are seen along the Great Lakes--apparently, not so much on Lake Erie, as its shore extends east/west--where large numbers of observers in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Minnesota see birds in fall. In Ohio, bodies of water oriented north/south, like many of our rivers and reservoirs, may invite more modest flocks. Here in Columbus, for example, many of our big fall records come from the OSU campus, where there are lots of observers--attentive or not--and some tracts of open area with flying insects, along the Olentangy flight path. Oddly enough, a goodly number of the biggest ones have occurred on September 3... That said, we haven't been seeing them in numbers such as we've seen in recent years, at least according to reports. I myself am not seeing the flocks of hundreds of migrants that at times induced me to climb onto the roof of my house, or walk over to the schoolyard, to count them. I certainly am not seeing any good numbers on this list, either. Come to think of it, I don't see as many flying insects as I used to, and the number of nesting birds in the neighborhood seems way down, as I suppose it may be in other metropolitan areas. Anyway, I hope it is just fewer urban insects. Heaven knows we have more observers, and more ways of discovering what they're seeing. Folks who want to see gatherings of insects can find them in many nearby places, but I hope the diminution of nighthawks seen here is just a lack of food rather than of birds to chase it. Bill Whan Columbus ______________________________________________________________________ Ohio-birds mailing list, a service of the Ohio Ornithological Society. Please consider joining our Society, at www.ohiobirds.org/site/membership.php. Our thanks to Miami University for hosting this mailing list. You can join or leave the list, or change your options, at: listserv.miamioh.edu/scripts/wa.exe?LIST=OHIO-BIRDS Send questions or comments about the list to: [log in to unmask]