Steve's Golden Oldie #1: Nighthawks
I've begun half-a-dozen blogs over the past couple of years as well as posted a few articles on various non-blog sites. It occurs to me to draw in those scattered writings and put them all in one place, where at least I can easily find them even if no one else is interested in them. Since this blog is my most active project currently, it makes sense to use this as my archival dump.
Since most of these random bits will be off-topic from even this blog's loosely defined theme, I will label each one as a "Steve's Golden Oldie." That way, those who want to skip it will be forewarned.
This follwing is something I wrote approximately two years ago:
During my walk last night it occurred to me that I don't see nighthawks anymore. In the neighborhood where I grew up, you could see them at dusk, swooping and darting around the street lamps in drunken-looking flight. What they were doing was feasting on mosquitoes and other insects, but of course you couldn't see that -- that fact came from my Little Golden Guide to Birds. What you could see was their silhouettes, the dark little bodies set off by white bars on the undersides of their swift-like wings. I miss them. They seemed like visitors from some secret world, popping into ours at one of the gaps -- the interstice between day and night in this case -- and then popping out again, having quickly and efficiently done what they had come for. Nighthawks are not hawks, of course; they are members of the goatsucker family of birds and, indeed, are related to the swifts. I'm going to be keeping an eye out for them on my walks now, though I think my present neighborhood environment is not conducive to the thriving of nighthawks ... too many damned trees. Intuition tells me they prefer areas that are more open. Perhaps I'll have to go nighthawk hunting in a likelier area one of these twilights. If I don't end up getting arrested for wandering around other people's neighborhoods at nightfall, peering oddly at the streetlights, maybe I'll manage to start a fad for nighthawk spotting.
[Tags: birds animals summertime nostalgia writing blogging nature outdoors walking neighborhoods]
Since most of these random bits will be off-topic from even this blog's loosely defined theme, I will label each one as a "Steve's Golden Oldie." That way, those who want to skip it will be forewarned.
This follwing is something I wrote approximately two years ago:
During my walk last night it occurred to me that I don't see nighthawks anymore. In the neighborhood where I grew up, you could see them at dusk, swooping and darting around the street lamps in drunken-looking flight. What they were doing was feasting on mosquitoes and other insects, but of course you couldn't see that -- that fact came from my Little Golden Guide to Birds. What you could see was their silhouettes, the dark little bodies set off by white bars on the undersides of their swift-like wings. I miss them. They seemed like visitors from some secret world, popping into ours at one of the gaps -- the interstice between day and night in this case -- and then popping out again, having quickly and efficiently done what they had come for. Nighthawks are not hawks, of course; they are members of the goatsucker family of birds and, indeed, are related to the swifts. I'm going to be keeping an eye out for them on my walks now, though I think my present neighborhood environment is not conducive to the thriving of nighthawks ... too many damned trees. Intuition tells me they prefer areas that are more open. Perhaps I'll have to go nighthawk hunting in a likelier area one of these twilights. If I don't end up getting arrested for wandering around other people's neighborhoods at nightfall, peering oddly at the streetlights, maybe I'll manage to start a fad for nighthawk spotting.
[Tags: birds animals summertime nostalgia writing blogging nature outdoors walking neighborhoods]
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