These
are really bad images of a very exciting species. The birds were
already calling when we arrived at dusk at the Community College on
Stock Island, close to Key West. To the best of my knowledge, the call
is the only truly reliable way of separating this species from the
smaller forms of Common Nighthawk.
Thankfully, the
rapid fire, multi-syllabic call of Antillean is easy to separate from
the steady ‘peent’ of Common. We were lucky enough to have three
calling birds in the air on this particular evening, and also saw one
calling over Big Pine Key on the evening of May 14th.
The images were taken at dusk against a stormy sky using a Canon Powershot and Leica 10x42 binoculars.
|
|
