[cobirds] City Poorwills, a Thing?

Don’t know if you recall, but I posted about a COMMON POORWILL we had in the alley behind our house in southwest Denver (Athmar Park neighborhood, Denver Co.) year before last (11 May ’20).  At the time this struck me as a very fun, but relatively isolated occurrence.  Well, last night (Tues., 3 May ’22) while letting the dogs out, we had another one show up!!  This guy, maybe gal, flew out of the alley and circled around before disappearing out front.  Not the end of the story as had to go back out about a half hour later to take out the trash, and presumably the same bird (???) flushed from our patio area and flew over towards our neighbor’s flat topped roof – for the record, I did not get the flashlight and binoculars to try and find it in her yard, though admittedly the temptation was there.

 

Anyway, question for the group.  While there are a decent number of reports of Poorwills in eBird away from the foothills in the city, they are spread out over time with most in places you might expect (ie; City Park, Botanic Gardens, …), so the question is, are these guys really more prevalent in town during migration than you would think?  We noticed ours late at night (10:-11:30pm), so thinking many may go unnoticed.  Based on all this, I suggest to the group to take your dogs out late and pay attention to what’s happening around the street lights.

 

Good (late night) Birding,

Doug

Denver