With 13,000 acres of natural landscape in Southwest Florida, Audubon’s Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is a haven for wildlife. Its rich mosaic of habitats—ranging from wet prairies and marshes to bald cypress and upland pine forests—combined with its location in the Western Everglades and proximity to the Gulf Coast, draws in a remarkable diversity of birdlife. Thousands of migratory birds use this area along the Atlantic Flyway each fall as a vital stopover, finding food, shelter, and rest before continuing their journeys south to destinations in the Caribbean or Latin America, including a recent Common Nighthawk recorded by the Motus Wildlife Tracking Station!
Motus Station Background
A Motus Wildlife Tracking Station at the Sanctuary, part of an international system of radio receivers, provides scientists and land managers with detailed information about the behavior and movements of birds. By picking up information transmitted by tiny tags scientists apply to the birds, Motus shows real-time data about migration.
Since its installation in 2022, the Sanctuary’s Motus station has recorded a total of 27 tagged birds comprising 16 species. All but three individuals were recorded during August, September, or October, emphasizing the Sanctuary’s importance during fall migration.
Maine Nightjar Monitoring Project
The Common Nighthawk that flew past the Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary station in September originated in northern Maine, tagged as part of the Maine Nightjar Monitoring Project, run by Logan Parker with the Maine Natural History Observatory.
After several evening and early morning attempts, Parker’s team successfully captured and outfitted this nighthawk with a tag on the morning of July 31, 2024. A few weeks later, it was detected by a station at Massif du Sud, a ski resort in Quebec, as it began its southward migration.
The Nighthawk’s Migration
Along its migratory path, our nighthawk encountered six more stations, including one at Blackwater National Wildlife Refuge in Cambridge, Maryland, which was the last to detect it in 2024. It likely spent the winter in South America before it returned to the U.S. in May of 2025, detected by a Motus station at the University of Georgia’s Eatonton Beef Research Farm, on its northward journey.
Several other stations recorded the bird as it returned to its summer breeding area in Maine, including in Maryland, New York, and Vermont.
Parker says he reencountered this bird during the 2025 field season, tracking it to its roost site in a cedar swamp and capturing it in July. On August 23, 2025, our nighthawk was detected heading south again as it passed by stations in New Hampshire, Connecticut, North Carolina, and then at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary on September 10, before disappearing from the radar again as it made its way to its wintering grounds.
Project Findings
While Parker has yet to really dig deep into the detection data (that will be happening this fall and winter), he says, “it has been fascinating to note the differences in movement strategy and detectability between Common Nighthawks and Eastern Whip-poor-wills,” which is his team’s other focal nightjar species. Both species are insect eaters.
According to Parker, nighthawks are detected at Motus stations more regularly than whip-poor-wills during migration (and often during the breeding season), likely due to differences in their foraging and migratory strategies, generally flying at greater heights than whip-poor-wills.
The study shows that these two similar birds also migrate differently. “As demonstrated by the detection at your station, nighthawks follow the coastline and cross the Gulf during their movements, while whip-poor-will often move through the continent’s interior and skirt around the Gulf before settling in Mexico and other parts of Central America,” Parker adds.
Protecting Migratory Birds
Learning about birds’ migratory behavior is critical when protecting them throughout their migratory journeys, as well as at their breeding and wintering locations. Learn more about the Common Nighthawk’s migration at Audubon’s Bird Migration Explorer.
The team at Corkscrew Swamp Sanctuary is dedicated to making these 13,000 acres a critical resting, nesting, and feeding place for both migratory and year-round species. Staff studies the rise and fall of water levels, conducts prescribed fire, manages invasive species, and restores habitat because the things birds rely on—healthy habitats, clean air, abundant fresh water, resilient coastlines—are the same things that people and other wildlife need to thrive.
