Common Nighthawk Sounds and Calls: A Prairie Listener’s Guide

The Common Nighthawk (Chordeiles minor) makes two sounds you are most likely to notice. The first is a nasal, buzzy call, usually written as “peent” or “beerp,” given by a bird flying overhead. The second is a deep “boom” or “vroom.” The boom is not a voice at all. Air rushes through a male’s wing feathers as he pulls out of a steep dive. If you hear these sounds over open prairie, a gravel road or a town rooftop at dusk in late spring or summer, you are very likely listening to a Common Nighthawk.

This guide explains what each sound means and when you are most likely to hear it. It also covers how to tell it from similar night sounds and how to listen well on your next evening outing.

What does a Common Nighthawk call sound like?

The Common Nighthawk call is a short, nasal, slightly buzzy note. Most field guides render it as “peent,” “peeik” or “beerp.” It lasts well under a second. The bird often repeats it every few seconds while flying, so a loose rhythm builds up overhead. The tone has a slightly electric quality, a bit like a quick blast through a kazoo.

This call is one of the bird’s flight calls: sounds made in the air rather than from a perch. Common Nighthawks rarely perch in open view while calling. Expect the sound to come from above, often from a bird you have not spotted yet. When you look up, watch for these features:

• Long, pointed wings with a crisp white bar across each wing near the tip
• An erratic, bounding, almost bat-like flight as the bird chases insects
• A slightly notched tail. Males also have a white band across the tail.

A single “peent” tells you a nighthawk is nearby and active. Several calls coming from different directions usually mean several birds are foraging over the same patch of sky. This often happens over water, fields or around lights.

Does the Common Nighthawk have a song?

The Common Nighthawk has no long, melodic song like a meadowlark or a sparrow. The repeated “peent” call is generally treated as its main advertising sound. Together with the booming display, it does the job a song does for other birds. So when people search for a “common nighthawk song,” they are usually hearing the peent call, the wing boom, or both.

This sets the nighthawk apart from many of its relatives in the nightjar family. Species such as the Eastern Whip-poor-will and the Common Poorwill repeat their names from the ground, often for long stretches through the night. The Common Nighthawk mostly calls on the wing and in shorter bursts. It is also most active at dawn and dusk rather than through the darkest hours.

What is the Common Nighthawk’s booming sound?

The booming sound is a mechanical, non-vocal noise made by a male Common Nighthawk during a display dive. The male climbs high, folds his wings partly and dives steeply toward the ground. Near the bottom of the dive he flexes his wings downward and swoops back up. Air rushing through his primary feathers (the long outer flight feathers) produces a sudden, low “vroom.” Some listeners compare it to a distant motorcycle, a gust through a pipe, or someone blowing across the mouth of a bottle.

Why do males boom?

Wing booming is part of the Common Nighthawk’s courtship displays and territorial behavior. Males perform these dives over their breeding area during the nesting season. They often dive toward a female, a perched bird or a nest site, and sometimes toward an intruder, including a person who walks too close. If dives keep happening over one spot of ground, you are probably near an active territory.

How to recognize a boom in the field

• It is sudden and low-pitched, quite unlike the thin, nasal peent.
• It usually comes right after you hear a few peent calls from high overhead.
• If you watch the sky, you may see a dark shape plummet and then swing upward at the moment of the sound.
• It is heard mainly in the breeding season, not during fall migration.

What other sounds do Common Nighthawks make?

Besides the peent and the boom, Common Nighthawks make quieter sounds, mostly close to the nest. These are less often heard because nighthawks lay their eggs directly on bare ground, gravel or flat rooftops, and the adults rely on camouflage. Reported sounds include:

• Low croaks, clucks or chuckling notes between adults near the nest site
• Hissing, sometimes with gaping and spread wings, when an adult or chick feels threatened at close range
• Soft peeping from young birds

If you hear hissing or see a nighthawk spreading its wings low to the ground, you are too close. Step back the way you came, slowly and carefully, watching where you put your feet.

When can you hear a Common Nighthawk sound at night?

You are most likely to hear a Common Nighthawk at dusk and dawn, during the warm months when the birds are on their breeding grounds. Nighthawks are crepuscular, meaning most active in twilight. Their calls usually pick up around sunset, when flying insects rise. They can carry on into the first part of the night, and pick up again before sunrise.

Calling after dark

A Common Nighthawk sound at night is most often heard in two situations:

• Around artificial lights. In towns, nighthawks feed on insects drawn to streetlights, stadium lights and lit parking areas. They may call well after dark there.
• On bright, moonlit nights. Extra light can extend feeding and calling time over open country.

On dark, cool or rainy nights, the sky over the prairie may be quiet. Fewer insects fly in those conditions, and the birds are less active.

Seasonal changes on the prairie

Common Nighthawks are long-distance migrants that winter in South America. They are among the later birds to return north. The listening season changes through the year roughly like this:

• Late spring arrival: The first evening peents of the year. Booming begins as males settle territories.
• Early to mid summer: Peak calling and display flights. This is the best time to hear booming over pastures, burns, gravel roads and rooftops.
• Late summer to early fall: Booming fades. Nighthawks may gather in loose flocks and drift south, sometimes in impressive numbers over towns and rivers in the evening. They call less in this season, so watch the sky as well as listening.
• Late fall and winter: Common Nighthawks are gone from northern prairies. Any evening sounds you hear then belong to other animals.

Exact timing varies with latitude and weather from year to year. Your own notes are the best guide to your local season.

How do you tell Common Nighthawk calls from similar night sounds?

The sound most often confused with the Common Nighthawk call is the American Woodcock’s “peent.” The two notes are similar, but the setting and season usually settle the question. The table below compares the night sounds a prairie listener is most likely to mix up.

A simple rule for the prairie: a nasal note from the sky on a summer evening is most likely a nighthawk. The same kind of note from the ground in early spring points to a woodcock.

How to listen for Common Nighthawks on your next outing

Hearing nighthawks well takes little equipment and some patience. These steps work for a prairie trail, a quiet country road or the edge of a small town.

1. Pick your time. Plan to arrive about half an hour before sunset on a warm, calm evening in late spring or summer.
2. Choose an open spot with a wide view of the sky. Grasslands, burned areas, gravel roads, river edges and towns with flat gravel roofs are all good. Stay on public land, trails or road shoulders where you are allowed to be.
3. Pack simply. Bring layers for the evening chill, insect repellent, water, and a notebook and pencil. A headlamp with a red-light setting helps you write without ruining your night vision.
4. Settle and stay quiet. Stand or sit still for a few minutes. Let your ears adjust before you start counting sounds.
5. Listen first, then look. When you hear a peent, turn toward it and scan the sky slowly. Look for long pointed wings with white bars.
6. Watch for dives. After several peents from one area, watch for a bird dropping steeply. Listen for the boom as it pulls up.
7. Stay into the dusk. Keep listening as the light fades. In town, move toward lit areas to hear birds calling after dark.
8. Record what you can. A phone’s voice-memo app can capture calls and booms well enough to review later. Keep your distance while recording.

How to write useful field notes about nighthawk sounds

Good field notes on Common Nighthawk vocalizations record what you heard, when, where and under what conditions. Over a season or several years, these notes reveal patterns, such as the date of your first evening peent or the spots where booming happens year after year.

For each outing, try noting:

• Date, location and habitat, for example: “gravel road beside mixed-grass pasture.”
• Start and end time, and the time of sunset
• Weather: temperature, wind, cloud cover and moonlight
• Sounds heard: number of peent calls or calling birds, number of booms, and any nest-area sounds
• Behavior seen: foraging height, flocking, dives, birds near lights
• Your own description of the sound, in words that will make sense to you later, such as “buzzy, like a kazoo” or “boom like a passing truck”

An example entry might read: “Mid-June, 9:10–9:55 p.m., sunset 9:20. Calm, warm, clear. At least 3 birds peenting over the pasture, 5 booms over the same gravel patch east of the fence line. Calling continued near the farmyard light after dark.” Notes like this help you return at the right time next year and notice if numbers change.

How to listen with care for nighthawks and their habitat

Respectful nighttime listening means enjoying Common Nighthawks without disturbing their nesting or feeding. The species has declined in many parts of its range. Because nighthawks nest right on open ground or rooftops, small disturbances matter.

• Keep your distance from booming areas. Repeated dives toward you, or a bird hissing or flopping on the ground, mean a nest or chicks may be close. Back away carefully.
• Watch your step on open ground. Eggs and chicks blend almost perfectly with gravel, bare soil and leaf litter.
• Avoid playing recorded calls during the breeding season. Playback can pull adults away from eggs or young and use energy they need for feeding.
• Keep dogs leashed in grassland and other open habitat in late spring and summer.
• Use light sparingly. Use a dim or red light only when you need it, and don’t shine lights at birds in flight or on the ground.
• Respect private land and rooftops. Listen from public places and ask permission before entering farm or ranch land.

Few prairie experiences match a warm evening when the sky fills with peent calls and the sudden boom of a diving male. Arrive early, stay still, write down what you notice and give the birds room. Each season, you will hear the Common Nighthawk a little more clearly.