In the wake of publicity about a nighthawk that turned up earlier this week in Oxfordshire, this item might be of interest. It appeared in April, 1951, in Volume 65 of The Canadian Field Naturalist, publication of the Ottawa Field-Naturalists' Club.
Nighthawk Stamina
On the afternoon of Tuesday, July 31, a wounded nighthawk was brought into my office in Ottawa, Ontario.
It had apparently been shot in the wing, above the shoulder, and, in addition, one eye was closed.
The bird had been found earlier that day on the grass outside National Defence Headquarters.
The finder had washed the wound which had bled quite a lot.
When it was brought to me, the bleeding had stopped, and, as the wing was not broken, it was decided to leave the bird on the grass in the central courtyard of the building where it would be out of the way of cats and see how it got on.
The next day it was still there, and the injured eye was beginning to open.
It seemed probable that the bird would recover if it did not die of starvation first, so I took it home and put it in a large wooden box, hoping to be able to induce it to eat.
Acting on advice from the Canadian Wildlife Service, I tried to catch moths for it.
The weather was cool, however, and only one moth was caught, together with a few flies of different kinds.
The nighthawk not only refused to eat them, it completely ignored them.
It is possible that they were not the right kind of insect, but I had the impression that the bird did not recognize them as food at all.
In spite of its refusal to eat, the nighthawk got steadily better. By Wednesday evening, the injured eye was wide open, and, some time on Thursday, the bird sat up on its feet instead of resting flat on its breast.
The wounded wing was held at an unnatural angle out from the body, but it was able to flap it quite vigorously when frightened by my approach.
On Thursday evening I put it on the window-sill to see if it would fly, but it did not move.
On Friday evening, I noticed that, for the first time, the bird was walking around the box with no incentive of fear, so I put it on the windowsill again.
It made no effort to move until I went to pick it up again whence it took off and flew away.
I lost sight of it fairly soon, but as long as I could see it it appeared to be flying strongly.
It had then been at least 80 hours without food.
Moira Dunbar
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| Meanwhile in England, 71 years later . . . how the national media, in this case The Daily Telegraph, reported the occurrence. Prior to this event, there had only been 26 confirmed UK records of the species, 14 of them on Scilly and most of the others at coastal sites. |
* Top picture: U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service via Wikimedia Commons
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