Art by Barry Kent MacKay
An All-Creatures.org
Art and Photo Presentation

(Artwork - 087)
Common Nighthawk
(Chordeiles minor)

This painting was the last one I completed in 2014, with the finishing touches added on New Years Eve. It shows a species that no longer lives up to its name, “common”, here in southern Ontario. I used to see far more of them, especially during August migration. They developed the habit of nesting on flat, gravel-covered roofs, and in the last few decades Ring-billed Gulls have started also nesting on these roofs, and are, of course, predatory on the eggs and/or young of the nighthawks. Also, there have been declines in other species that, like the Common Nighthawk, eat flying insects on the wing, and the suggestion has been made that use of pesticides, especially in the neotropics where many of these species winter, may have resulted in a decline overall. Whatever the reason, they are not locally endangered, and in the Midwest they seem to be holding their own.
 
The painting was done after I did a similar one in the fall.  One of my patrons saw it, and wanted something similar.  I changed the background and the flight direction, and showed the bird in a dorsal, instead of ventral, view. Usually these birds are active at dusk or nocturnally, but I chose to show, in both paintings, late afternoon-early evening scenes of August migrants. The background is very loosely based on a real farm near Peterborough, Ontario. The painting is approximately life-size, in acrylics, on compressed hardboard (“Masonite”).

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