With 13,000 acres of pure panorama in Southwest Florida, Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is a haven for wildlife. Its wealthy mosaic of habitats—starting from moist prairies and marshes to bald cypress and upland pine forests—mixed with its location within the Western Everglades and proximity to the Gulf Coast, attracts in a outstanding variety of birdlife. 1000’s of migratory birds use this space alongside the Atlantic Flyway every fall as an important stopover, discovering meals, shelter, and relaxation earlier than persevering with their journeys south to locations within the Caribbean or Latin America, together with a current Widespread Nighthawk recorded by the Motus Wildlife Monitoring Station!
Motus Station Background
A Motus Wildlife Monitoring Station on the Sanctuary, a part of a global system of radio receivers, gives scientists and land managers with detailed details about the habits and actions of birds. By choosing up data transmitted by tiny tags scientists apply to the birds, Motus reveals real-time knowledge about migration.
Since its set up in 2022, the Sanctuary’s Motus station has recorded a complete of 27 tagged birds comprising 16 species. All however three people had been recorded throughout August, September, or October, emphasizing the Sanctuary’s significance throughout fall migration.
Maine Nightjar Monitoring Venture
The Widespread Nighthawk that flew previous the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary station in September originated in northern Maine, tagged as a part of the Maine Nightjar Monitoring Venture, run by Logan Parker with the Maine Pure Historical past Observatory.
After a number of night and early morning makes an attempt, Parker’s group efficiently captured and outfitted this nighthawk with a tag on the morning of July 31, 2024. A number of weeks later, it was detected by a station at Massif du Sud, a ski resort in Quebec, because it started its southward migration.
The Nighthawk’s Migration
Alongside its migratory path, our nighthawk encountered six extra stations, together with one at Blackwater Nationwide Wildlife Refuge in Cambridge, Maryland, which was the final to detect it in 2024. It doubtless spent the winter in South America earlier than it returned to the U.S. in Could of 2025, detected by a Motus station on the College of Georgia’s Eatonton Beef Analysis Farm, on its northward journey.
A number of different stations recorded the fowl because it returned to its summer season breeding space in Maine, together with in Maryland, New York, and Vermont.
Parker says he reencountered this fowl throughout the 2025 discipline season, monitoring it to its roost web site in a cedar swamp and capturing it in July. On August 23, 2025, our nighthawk was detected heading south once more because it handed by stations in New Hampshire, Connecticut, North Carolina, after which at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary on September 10, earlier than disappearing from the radar once more because it made its approach to its wintering grounds.
Venture Findings
Whereas Parker has but to essentially dig deep into the detection knowledge (that will likely be occurring this fall and winter), he says, “it has been fascinating to notice the variations in motion technique and detectability between Widespread Nighthawks and Jap Whip-poor-wills,” which is his group’s different focal nightjar species. Each species are insect eaters.
In line with Parker, nighthawks are detected at Motus stations extra repeatedly than whip-poor-wills throughout migration (and sometimes throughout the breeding season), doubtless attributable to variations of their foraging and migratory methods, usually flying at larger heights than whip-poor-wills.
The research reveals that these two comparable birds additionally migrate in a different way. “As demonstrated by the detection at your station, nighthawks comply with the shoreline and cross the Gulf throughout their actions, whereas whip-poor-will typically transfer by way of the continent’s inside and skirt across the Gulf earlier than settling in Mexico and different components of Central America,” Parker provides.
Defending Migratory Birds
Studying about birds’ migratory habits is crucial when defending them all through their migratory journeys, in addition to at their breeding and wintering areas. Be taught extra concerning the Widespread Nighthawk’s migration at Audubon’s Bird Migration Explorer.
The group at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is devoted to creating these 13,000 acres a crucial resting, nesting, and feeding place for each migratory and year-round species. Workers research the rise and fall of water ranges, conducts prescribed hearth, manages invasive species, and restores habitat as a result of the issues birds depend on—wholesome habitats, clear air, considerable recent water, resilient coastlines—are the identical issues that folks and different wildlife have to thrive.
