Biologists Work to Bring Back Nighthawks to New Hampshire

1087/1088 (nat sound up stairs..)
A group of volunteers for New Hampshire Audubon struggle up the stairs of Concord’s Public Library.
They’re carrying five gallon buckets of peastone gravel to the rooftop.
1090 (Do we have one more bucket coming?..let’s fill in some of this area in here..)
That’s Becky Suomala, a New Hampshire Audubon biologist.
(1090 We’re putting down peastone gravel because Nighthawks prefer to nest on very fine gravel, they don’t actually build a nest, they lay their eggs right on the gravel, and the eggs blend in with the gravel.)
New Hampshire Audubon members have seen Nighthawks diving over the Concord Library and other downtown buildings before.
They’re hoping if they lay a gravel patch on the roof, similar to the birds natural habitat, they will eventually nest.
Suomala says Nighthawks used to nest on rooftops from Berlin to Nashua, but now seem to reside only in Concord and Keene.

1094:18 one of the reasons we think they may have disappeared is that the roofs that used to be roofed with peastone have been replaced with this larger gravel or this rubber.
It’s a big experiment – researchers at the University of Maine are the only one’s who have tried it before.
And they were successful.
Suomala says they’ve put up about seven gravel patches on Concord and Keene rooftops so far.
This job is a bit easier than trying to bring back pine barrens – where the birds once flourished.
1099 :57 The ideal place would be to bring back their natural habitat but the industrial development in the pine barrens of Concord is not going to go away, the housing developments are not going to go away, and these areas tend to promote ground predators like raccoons, squirrels, chipmunks, skunks that feed on Nighthawk eggs and chicks that nest on the ground.
Stephanie Parkinson, President of Audubon’s Concord Area Chapter, is hoping the birds might have a better chance of survival on rooftops.
She’s been monitoring patches placed on rooftops where she works.
1110 as we were putting the first few patches down I thought, well first we got rid of their natural habitat, and then we replaced the habitat they had adapted to with rubberized roofs so we took away that habitat, so, it’s like we’re doing everything we can to chase them away.
Parkinson says she loves seeing the birds – which are about the size of a large swallow.
They fly like bats in the night, eating up mosquitoes and insects that are attracted to city lights.
Parkinson says she loves the Nighthawks call.
2:31 It’s kind of a high pe-ent pe-ent and very nasally and quite loud, it sort of echoes and when they’re really out there, it echoes around the buildings.
In Concord, two Nighthawks have made their homes on the roofs of the Old Navy and the Bon Ton at the Mall.
Suomala says they are hard to spot in the night sky, but easy to hear …
1118 3:03
Finally, she sees one dive for insects..
1119 There it is, right over the light
Suomala and other Audubon members will be monitoring the rooftops where they placed gravel patches.
But biologists say it may take several years before the Common Nighthawks stops being an uncommon guest in New Hampshire.
For NHPR news, I’m Amy Quinton.