Thunderbirds

Thunderclouds loom overhead. It is overcast and still. Gnats surround me, attracted to my eyes, nose and mouth. Taking a breath, I inhale one, sputtering and coughing as I try to dislodge it from my throat.

Suddenly, overhead, a bird silhouette slices through the darkening sky. It looks like the bird cutouts that adorn the windows of the homes I pass on my way to school. Long, tapering wings end in a sharp point, with a crook in the middle of the wing; a stubby, neck-less head, and a tail that is sometimes a narrow rectangle and sometimes a perfect fan, depending on the bird’s flight.

And can they fly! They swoop, glide briefly, flap, turn, roll, bank, dive, plunge, and make me stop to watch them. How can they do that? In a second a bird has plunged towards the earth, banked sharply left and back up, rolled over to the right, dived down again, stopped abruptly by fanning open its tail, flapped upwards to gain altitude, and started the sequence again, varying directions constantly.

More thunderbirds join the flock already wheeling overhead. Soon at least 50 birds soar above the field that is golden with autumn flowers.

That startling flight, those awe-inspiring dives and rolls, all have one purpose—to catch food. The thunderbirds feed on insects. People know them more commonly as nighthawks or bullbats, and they are described as “hawking” after insects. They must move quickly, change directions abruptly, in order to capture the moths, mosquitoes, and the gnats that have plagued me this afternoon.

Up close these birds seem as strange as their many names would suggest. They have huge mouths with tiny beaks that seem to be an afterthought. Stiff feathers that look like mammalian hairs jut out around the edges of the mouth. The whole effect is that of a baby bird’s wide gaping mouth surrounded by a sparse, wild moustache.

The family name for the thunderbirds, and their relatives the whip-poor-will and chuck-will’s-widow, is Goatsucker, or Caprimulgidae. Legend says that the birds drink the milk of goats. This idea was probably fostered by two observations. One, the suprisingly large mouth, reminiscent of a baby bird or suckling child; and two, that the birds fly at dusk, often around fields and livestock, hawking for the insects that are plentiful there. The other family name for the whole group is Nightjar, but only the whip-poor-wills and chuck-will’s-widows jar the night with their loud, repetitive calls. Thunderbirds are silent during the night, although they sometimes call to each other while feeding at dusk.

The courtship is a spectacular affair. One bird, presumably the male, flies upwards until nearly out of sight. Just about the time you’ve forgotten he was there, he comes hurtling toward the earth in a straight dive. An instant before hitting the ground, the bird opens his wings and pulls out of the dive, and a deep resonant “boom” reverberates in the air. It is either this boom or the appearance before thunderstorms that results in their common name of thunderbirds. The boom is heard most often on the breeding grounds, but they fly ahead of thunderclouds all along their migration route.

Thunderbirds, or nighthawks, have a bar of white feathers on each wing, a certain fieldmark for identification if you should need it. These are not holes in the wing that produce the boom, as many people believe. They are just white feathers.

For a bird with such complete mastery of the air, thunderbirds and their relatives have a very solid link to the earth. They nest directly on the ground, in slight depressions scooped out in the soil. The birds are the drab, uneven brown of last year’s leaves and blend in so perfectly with the earth that they are nearly impossible to see. They rely on their camouflage to protect them during the day as they rest securely on the ground in open view of predators.

The thunderbirds that I see this cloudy September day, hawking insects in the air about the farmfields of Appalachia, are the adults and the young of the year. All are heading south, on their annual migration. They’ll return in May, when I can count on hearing a whip-poor-will outside the windows of my mountain home. Along the coast, the chuck-will’s-widow jars the night with its endless call, and nighthawks nest in the dry forests. While September seems to end the season, it’s really just part of the cycle that has no ending. They’ll be back in May.

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