I finally figured out what freakin' bird that is!
I play this game with myself all the time. I can't help but be a nerd when there is a question nagging in my mind. Now, as for the last ten years, the answer is always to be found on the Internet. And, everything is getting so sophisticated now, but it still amazes me that I can find the answer to almost anything I want to know.
There is this bird. OMG, this freakin' bird! It's too hot now, but in April we were all basking in the gloriousness of being able to open our windows and let the cool air blow in. It's a tragedy if you have to start thinking about air conditioning that early in the year, and we already had to turn them on a few times by that point. Frick! if gasoline for the cars isn't enough, now we all have to try to really and truly think about our A/C usage as well, so we don't have to sell our gold teeth to keep the electricity running.
Well, this bird could be heard... ALL. NIGHT. LONG. Screech! Screech! After a while, it really chafed. You know, at first you don't notice. Then, you notice a couple nights later that it's a regular pattern, and if you think about it at all, you think maybe it's a cricket. ? Nope. After a week or two, you realize it's a bird and it comes out at dusk, every day, every night, at the same time, and even when you can't sleep, it's still sqawking every 2 seconds when it's 4:30AM and still dark out. Screech! Screech! Screech! SCREECH!
I mentioned this to my neighbor a couple of weeks ago, and said "What is that bird?" She's a biology major and we've discussed plants before, so maybe she would know. She said, "That damn bird," and gritted her teeth. She said it was driving them crazy at night, too. I asked another of my neighbors, who because he's a single man thinks he knows everything. Of course, he was wrong.
For the past few nights I've spent time when I take the dog out searching in the darkness over the apartment buildings to see if I can get a glimpse of this very small, and high-flying, active little beast. I saw it one night, then I had to start obsessively looking for it many times a night. I could tell when it was getting closer to me by the screech! getting louder, and I saw it was gray. Then it flew right over me one night and I could see it was striped with black and white.
I looked all over the Internet for hours and I couldn't believe that there was not some readily accessible list of NIGHT BIRDS. The website WHATBIRD.COM was the answer to my prayers, though I spent more hours there. Some fascinating things there and cool facts where I found out this particular bird does a diving display every minute or so. It's got this step-by-step search, and as soon as I knew it was small, gray and striped, I found out it's called:
THE NIGHTHAWK
Ta-da SCREECH!
posted by Maverick @ 11:12 PM
0 bead-freaks flashed at this parade
