Their mouths are much bigger than their beaks look. A Common Nighthawk has a tiny-looking bill, but when it opens its mouth, it reveals an enormous gape designed to scoop insects right out of the air like a flying net. They can eat hundreds of insects in a single evening!
Their feet are surprisingly tiny. Unlike hawks or songbirds, nighthawks rarely walk or perch upright on branches. Their small feet are mainly designed for clinging and resting rather than hopping around.
They often rest lengthwise on branches instead of across them. Most birds perch sideways on a branch, but nighthawks commonly sit parallel to the branch or fence rail, helping them blend in like a broken piece of bark.
Their camouflage is so effective that people sometimes almost step on them. When nesting or resting on the ground, they often stay perfectly motionless, relying entirely on their mottled feather pattern to disappear into gravel, leaves, or dirt.
Common Nighthawks migrate incredibly long distances. Many birds that spend summer in Colorado travel all the way to South America for the winter, making them true long-distance migrants.
They sometimes hunt around stadium lights and parking lots. Artificial lights attract insects, and nighthawks quickly learned that these areas can become giant nighttime buffets.
They were once nicknamed “bull-bats.” Early settlers sometimes mistook their erratic flight for bats and even believed they drank milk from livestock, which is completely untrue but helped create some wonderfully strange folklore around the species.
