THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Wednesday, May 17, 1995 TAG: 9505180203
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: LAWRENCE MADDRY
LENGTH: Medium: 84 lines
FORGET ABOUT THE mockingbird. Gary Williamson has found a bird that dives like a jet plane and makes a sound like a bullfrog.
I'll swear.
You can tell that Williamson, the chief park ranger at Kiptopeke State Park, has chosen the right occupation. He was very excited when he phoned last week.
``I've been a birder all my life,'' he said. ``But I've never seen or heard anything like it.''
He was talking about diving nighthawks.
``They've been giving quite an aerial display over here each evening,'' he said.
Kiptopeke State Park, with its fishing pier, campground and nature trails, is one of the state's newest parks and one that's a quick getaway spot for folks in Hampton Roads. It is only a short drive from the toll plaza on the Eastern Shore side of the Chesapeake Bay bridge-tunnel.
Williamson said they have been seeing nighthawks at the park since it opened. But the dives and the bullfrog sounds are something new.
The nighthawk is a gray-brown bird related to the whippoorwill. It is usually seen at dawn or dusk. It has a broad white bar across the wings and zigzags across the sky with mouth open devouring mosquitoes and other insects.
A single nighthawk can swallow a surprising number of insects - about 500 mosquitoes or 2,000 ants.
But the nighthawk dive is truly spectacular.
``It's part of the mating ritual for the male nighthawk,'' Williamson said.
He says each evening the male nighthawks in the park fly high above the treetops and then plunge toward the ground like dive bombers.
``It's just about a vertical dive,'' he said. ``As they pull out of the dive, they extend their wings and point them downward and flare out the wings to make a sound caused by wind rushing through their feathers.''
Apparently, the nighthawk is diving just so it can make the sound - a turn-on for female nighthawks.
``When the wind rushes through the feathers at the end of the dive, what does the noise created sound like?'' I asked.
``Like a bullfrog,'' he replied.
``What?''
``A bullfrog,'' he repeated. ``It's a wrrooonking sound.''
Williamson said the male nighthawks - which have wings swept back like terns - seem to begin their dives when 60 feet high and pull out when about 10 feet from the ground.
He has been unable to determine what the female does at the moment she hears the male nighthawk wrrrooonk like a frog.
But he says the female frog sound is a definite turn-on for the female nighthawk and that mating usually follows the performance.
(A word of caution! Male humans, no matter how horny, should not try this at home, or on the road, without a hang glider. It probably doesn't work for humans anyway. When I was much younger, I used to jump off high diving boards over pools with the same objective in mind as the male nighthawk. I always shouted ``Eyowww!'' before belly-flopping to the water. The women at poolside were rarely impressed. Most ignored it; a few looped their fingers around their ears.)
Williamson believes the courting dives probably mean that nighthawks will lay their eggs in the park for the first time.
He believes that male nighthawks likely do their dives with bullfrog sounds rushing from the feathers in Hampton Roads cities. ``But there is so much traffic noise in the cities, it would be difficult to hear.''
Nighthawks, he said, do not make nests but lay their eggs on beaches and pebbled places or gravelly soil. Sometimes the eggs are laid on stumps or fence rails 8 feet high.
``If there's a high-rise building with a gravel roof, they will lay their eggs on those, too,'' Williamson said.
Kiptopeke State Park has plenty of other birds to see at this time of year. There's a hawk observatory at Kiptopeke and plenty of pelicans, terns, gulls, egrets and osprey to watch. There are four elevated walkways extending about 200 feet that meander among dunes and take the stroller through the tops of trees down to the bay.
But those diving nighthawks are definitely worth the trip. Birds that sound like bullfrogs? Wait til those folks doing Budweiser TV commercials hear about this. by CNB