I've lived in the same urban neighborhood for 35 years, and reminiscence urges some questions. One of the regular spectacles has been the fall movements of nighthawks. These birds move north in spring, but in small numbers and often at a high altitude; in the fall, much larger numbers sweep south. If I look back twenty years or so, I can recall autumnal scrambles up on the roof of the house to wade in a river of nighthawks this time of year. The river of this area is half a mile downhill here, and it and the insects it attracts have been flowing south at this time for centuries. Night before last I finally spotted a single nighthawk in its jerky progress soaring south overhead. Not as in the old days, and I wonder why. I know that nightjars are diminishing in numbers, but the losses here in town have been catastrophic. I wonder if nighthawks are no longer finding enough food in urban settings. I used to walk down to a school parking lot to see locally nesting nighthawks close up at parking-lot lights, or see lots of them over the buggy lighted ball- fields in summer and especially in fall. Now, not so much. I acknowledge the continent-wide diminution of nighthawk populations, but their precipitous losses in the city make me wonder if the loss of insect prey is partly to blame. I have six trees at least a foot in diameter, and flowering mostly native plants, but they seem to attract fewer insects by the year. Even flies, I'm glad to report, but moths and butterflies and bees just aren't around as much anymore. I imagine lots of birders in the city share my experience, but I wonder if losses of tasty insects are keeping nighthawks out of the urban scene, and we are stuck with apparently indigestible house sparrows... 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]