Like other reporters, I have only a dribble of nighthawks to report. I can recall climbing onto the roof of my house on an early evening in the 80s to estimate ~600 nighthawks passing maybe 20 feet overhead. A couple of years later I was still able to find 300+ in the neighborhood, but three-digit numbers are no more. Here in town, Lawrence Hicks counted 1200 on 8/26/37, not an unusual number at the time. Kirk Alexander had 800 in town on 8/27/1987, and Bruce Stehling reported 400 here on 9/20/1975 and 500 on 9/9/1980. These numbers obviously represented just those counted in limited areas by single observers on certain evenings. This species has been estimated (Cornell Lab) to have diminished by ~61% since the mid-60s, killed off by pesticides and habitat degradation; I wonder if this is an underestimation. The Cornell site relates that one banded in Ohio was the oldest known, at nine years of age. Little is known about their South American wintering grounds. Various experts blame the loss of their numbers on human controls of mosquitoes and other insects; this seems unlikely, given the large part of their lengthy migration undertaken in rural areas where such controls are less often undertaken. Others blame new roof treatments, but of course these too seem trivial over their range. I can't explain why, but I am looking for fewer and fewer of these birds as time passes. Bill Whan ______________________________________________________________________ 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]