Common Nighthawk Photos

Photography by Terry Sohl

My Favorite: Common Nighthawks are something you often see in the summer months in South Dakota, but it's mostly while they're foraging, with erratic, acrobatic flights as they chase flying insects. I don't see them sitting still very often, partially because where trees are available, they'll often roost in the daytimes on a tree branch, where they tend to blend right in. In western South Dakota, however, you have broad swaths of land with few trees, and you do sometimes see them perched on a fence post, a bare rock, or other exposed location. On this trip near Wind Cave National Park in June of 2020, I found one perched on the barbed wire itself. Another reason this is a favorite photo is that I caught the moment when he was making the strange, harsh call of a Common Nighthawk.

Another strange feature of the Common Nighthawk is captured in the Wind Cave National Park photos below. It's hard to see in the downscaled web versions of the photos, but in the original photos the middle toe on the left foot has a long extension of a "comb". It's called a pectinate toe, with the function of the toe thought to be for grooming feathers. Relatively few species have such a self-grooming feature, but members of the Nightjar familiy (including Common Nighthawk) are one of those species. A closer view of the pectinate toe can be found in one of the photos below.

Common Nighthawk - Chordeiles minor


Common Nighthawk 1	Common Nighthawk 2	Common Nighthawk 3	Common Nighthawk 4
June 28th, 2020	June 28th, 2020	May 19th, 2019	June 30th, 2017
Near Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota	Near Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota	Newton Hills State Park, South Dakota	Near Kadoka, South Dakota
Nighthawk in flight in clear blue sky	Nighthawk calling from a barbed wire fence with blue sky backround	Nighthawk perched on a horizontal tree branch	Nighthawk perched on wooden fence rail in bright afternoon sun

Common Nighthawk 5	Common Nighthawk 6	Common Nighthawk 7
June 28th, 2020	June 28th, 2020	June 28th, 2020
Near Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota	Near Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota	Near Wind Cave National Park, South Dakota
Nighthawk perched on barbed wire fence	Nighthawk calling from a barbed wire fence with blue sky backround	Pectinate toe / claw on a Common Nighthawk