Most active at dusk and dawn, the “peent” call of the Common Nighthawk (Chordeiles minor) was once a familiar sound in cities and towns throughout New Hampshire, where they nest on flat, peastone gravel roofs and feed on insects attracted to city lights. In recent years, rubber and PVC have largely replaced peastone roofing, and nesting nighthawks have disappeared from many New Hampshire towns; in the few towns where they remain (including Keene!), their numbers have dramatically declined. Biologists are now trying to determine if the disappearance of the nighthawks is linked to the disappearance of peastone roofs.
photo: Kathleen Murphy
In efforts to conserve this state-threatened species, AVEO, New Hampshire Audubon and Antioch University New England graduate student Ken Klapper placed fifteen experimental gravel patches on rooftops throughout Keene and Concord in 2007 & 2008, and AVEO volunteers monitored nighthawks in Keene on summer evenings from 2007 — 2009 and again in 2011. If the nest patches prove to be a promising strategy for nighthawk conservation, AVEO will continue to expand the Keene nestpatch initiative and New Hampshire Audubon will broaden their nighthawk restoration and monitoring efforts to include other cities that once supported nesting nighthawks.
For daily updates on nighthawk sightings in Keene during the breeding season (June – August), be sure to visit AVEO on Facebook! To download the 2011 form for recording nighthawk observations in Keene, click here.
Click each year to learn what we discovered about nighthawks in Keene in
2008, 2010, & 2011.
Read the Keene State Today article about Project Nighthawk.
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For more information, contact AVEO Program Director Brett Amy Thelen at thelen@harriscenter.org or (603) 358-2065.
Project Nighthawk in Keene was generously supported by the Association for Field Ornithologists, the Melanson Company and the U.S Fish and Wildlife Service, in cooperation with the Cheshire County Conservation District.
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