early birds

It pays to get up and out early and it gets easier and easier to do so as the sun rises later and later every day. The official local time for sunrise in East Quogue is approaching 6:30 but, even though we face east, the trees of Pine Neck and the morning clouds -- common at this season -- delay the sun's appearance somewhat.

The early light just before sunrise offers a good chance to find rails and other marsh birds but this morning's early bird roundup was a little different. As I sat myself down by the pond to wait for the sun, I spotted two COMMON NIGHTHAWKS coming over the creek. This creature always struck me as a kind of Darth Vader bird surrounded by mystery. It is a nightjar, not a hawk -- a relative of Whip-poor-wills and Chuck-will's Widows. It is dark in color with long pointy wings that have a racing stripe down the middle and it hawks insects high in the sky at dawn and dusk and sometimes well into the night (generally where there are night lights to attract moths and other insects). It used to nest in open areas of the Pine Barrens but it is famous for having taken to breeding on flat rooftops in towns and cities -- night light habitats with lots of insects. This was a safe place until the rather recent proliferation of American Crows into urban and suburban areas; the crows have apparently learned to predate the roof-nesting birds. For this and other reasons, Nighthawk populations are down and I haven't seen them much in recent years. This is migration season for these birds; like other insect eaters they must go south before cold weather takes a toll on their prey. On the East End of Long Island the best time and place to see them is right now on the North Shore; when we visited the Baiting Hollow Hummingbird Sanctuary last week, we saw half a dozen or so moving along the bluffs between the Harbor Hills moraine and Long Island Sound. (It was overcast and they were on the move rather early in the day.) We used to see them regularly down here on the South Shore as well, mostly at this time of the year and time of the day, but it has been a number of years now that we have been nighthawkless.

This wasn't the morning's only good bird. As I worked my way up the trail to the head of the marsh and, as is my wont, tried to peer into the dense foliage that lines the trail -- mostly the two species of High Tide Bush, Ivo and Baccharis -- a bird with a striking white eyering and a bright yellow breast popped up: A YELLOW-BREASTED CHAT! Again, this is or was a rare nester on Long Island and I used to see it regularly in fall migration in just this spot. It even appeared in the spring, often singing away but never stayed to nest. Like the Nighthawk, I haven't seen it much recently but it's an elusive bird of dense thickets and always a good find.    

Eric Salzman