slowly than before, I saw them clearly enough to identify them
tentatively as nighthawks. Because they live by my schedule, I am
familiar with this species, also known as night jars, which encompasses
seventy varieties, including the whippoorwill.
Nighthawks feed on insects moths, flying ants, mosquitoes, beetles and
dine while on the wing. Snatching tidbits from the air, they jink this
way and that, exhibiting a singular swooping-darting-twisting pattern of
flight that, as much as anything, identifies them.
The full moon provides them with the ideal circumstances for a banquet,
because in its radiance, flying insects are more visible.
Ordinarily, nighthawks are ceaselessly active in these conditions, their
harsh churring calls cutting the air as they feast.
The lunar lamp above, currently unobstructed by clouds, ensured good
hunting, yet these birds were not inclined to take advantage of the
ideal conditions. Acting counter to instinct, they squandered the
moonlight, flying monotonously in a circle that was approximately forty
feet in diameter, around and around over the intersection. For the most
part, they proceeded in single file, though three pairs flew side by
side, none feeding or issuing a single cry.
I crossed the intersection and kept going.
In the distance, the sound of the engine abruptly cut off. If it was
Bobby’s Jeep, he must have arrived at our rendezvous point.
I was a third of the way into the subsequent block when the flock
followed. They passed overhead at a higher altitude than previously but
low enough to cause me to tuck my head down.
When I arrived at another intersection, they had again formed a bird
carousel, minus calliope, circling thirty feet overhead.
Although any attempt to take a count would have resulted in more vertigo
than waits in a bottle of tequila, I was sure the number of nighthawks
had grown.
Over the next two blocks, the size of the flock swelled until it wasn’t
necessary to take a count to verify the increase. By the time I reached
the three-way intersection in which this street ended, at least a
hundred birds were circling quietly above. For the most part, they were
now grouped in pairs, and there were two layers to this flying feathered
ring, one about five to ten feet higher than the other.
I stopped, gazing up, transfixed.
Thanks to the circus between my ears, I can seize upon the smallest
disquieting observation and from it extrapolate a terror of cataclysmic
proportions. Yet, though the birds unnerved me, I still didn’t believe
they were a threat.
Their unnatural behavior was ominous without implying aggression.
This aerial ballet, humdrum in its pattern yet inexpressibly graceful,
conveyed a mood as clear and unmistakable as any ballet ever performed
by dancers on a stage, as affecting as any piece of music ever meant to
touch the heart and the mood here was sorrow. Sorrow so poignant that it
pinched my breath and made me feel as though something more bitter than
blood were pumping through my veins.
To poets but also to those whose stomachs curdle at the mention of
poetry, birds in flight usually evoke thoughts of freedom, hope, faith,
joy. The thrum of these pinions, however, was as bleak as the keening of
an arctic wind coming across a thousand miles of barren ice, it was a
forlorn sound, and in my heart it coalesced into an icy weight.
With the exquisite timing and choreography that suggests psychic
connections among the members of a flock, the double ring of birds
fluidly combined into a single ascending spiral. They rose like a coil
of dark smoke, around and up and up through the flue of the night,
across the pocked moon, becoming steadily less visible against the
stars, until at last they dissipated like mere fumes and soot across the
rooftop of the world.
All was silent. Windless. Dead.
This behavior of the nighthawks had been unnatural, certainly, but not a
meaningless aberration, not a mere curiosity. There was calculation
therefore meaningin their air show.
The puzzle resisted an easy solution.
Actually, I wasn’t sure I wanted to fit all the pieces together.
The resultant picture was not likely to be comforting. The birds
themselves posed no threat, but their bizarre performance couldn’t be