About.com Rating

The Bottom Line:

Birders rarely get as intimate of a bird's eye view as they can get in Nighthawk!, a captivating novel by Jamie Bastedo. Told from the perspective of Wisp, a juvenile common nighthawk on an epic journey no other member of his species has completed, this book takes readers right to the heart of migration and the perils it entails. While intended for teen or other young readers, the details of Nighthawk!


will engage and entertain birders of all ages.

Pros:

• Covers a wide range of migration hazards and in doing so raises awareness of the threats migrating birds face on their journeys.
• Subtly teaches about bird navigation abilities without going into technical details or strong academic language.
• Brief mentions of a wide range of species adds avian diversity that will appeal to birders.

Cons:

• Lacks any supplemental information on real nighthawks and thus misses an opportunity to engage readers in real-life birding beyond the scope of the novel.
• Forced accent of the raven Gonzo can be overdone and hard to read at times, but adds to the bird's characterization.

Description:

• Title: Nighthawk!
• Author: Jamie Bastedo
• Publisher: Red Deer Press
• Publication Date: March 2013
• Format: Softcover
• Page Count: 236
• ISBN: 978-0-88995-455-7
• Price: $12.95 (USD)

Review – Nighthawk!

Common nighthawks are amazing birds, with stunning flight abilities and lengthy migrations that fascinate birders, but "they are mysterious birds, hard to see, hard to find, hard to figure out." Jamie Bastedo strives to help readers figure out these captivating birds in Nighthawk!

, in an unusual way – through the eyes of the bird and the drive that encourages its migration. Wisp, a young male nighthawk, loses his family before he leaves the nest, and has to survive his first southward migration from the Northwest Territories of Canada to the rainforest of Ecuador on his own, seeking help from a wide variety of other birds along the way.

While readers do not follow Wisp on that southbound journey, they catch up with the acrobatic flier in the wintering colony of nighthawks, where bird hierarchies are strict and personalities clash in the fight for dominance and control. Wisp craves freedom and escapes to tackle his northward migration, but the journey is fraught with difficulties, including pursuit by those who resent his independence and seek to obliterate his rebellion.

Along the way, Wisp and his companions – his sister and a wily raven – encounter a range of obstacles common to bird migration, threats that Wisp senses as they begin. "The unmarked flyway ahead, reaching across two continents, is booby-trapped with an evil chain of storms, starvation, predators, and death." The greatest obstacle, however, is Wisp's inability to navigate by the stars, a commonly accepted explanation for how birds find their way on long migrations. Instead, he relies on other techniques to migrate, including using landmarks and his own internal compass, to the ultimate goal – reaching the tundra, a further destination than any nighthawk has ever navigated.

In a brief interview at the book's end, Bastedo addresses the issue of this extended migration and how birds' ranges are changing. "Climate change, famine, storms, navigation problems, rivalry with others, youthful inexperience, or simple wanderlust may all play a part." All of those factors do play a part in Wisp's migration, and all are plausible explanations for shifting ranges that ornithologists are noticing for different bird species today.

While this book heavily anthropomorphizes birds, even creating a fictional hierarchy in the wintering nighthawk colony and attributing cliché accents to different birds Wisp encounters, it still keeps readers engaged along the journey. Chapters are short and easy to read, many of them ending with exciting cliffhangers that will have readers reluctant to close the book. There is some "potty humor" in the book that can be off-putting, but it is relatively minimal and can be overlooked. Bastedo draws on his own experiences as a naturalist to add great authenticity to the text, and poignantly illustrates the perils of migration through Wisp's adventures.

Birders will especially enjoy that far more than just nighthawks are mentioned in the book. While mentions of additional species are brief, they do add great avian diversity to the story, and cameo appearances are made by…

• Arctic tern
• Bufflehead
• Mallard
• Olive-sided flycatcher
• Red-tailed hawk
• Scissor-tailed flycatcher
• Snow goose
• Turkey vulture
• Yellow-billed loon

These are just a few of the additional species Wisp encounters, but they illustrate how different bird species can be interconnected, though albeit not in quite the way a work of fiction portrays.

Nighthawk! is an easy, entertaining read, and while a cast of characters or glossary of unfamiliar terms might make it easier to initially keep up with the fictional nighthawk society, readers will adjust to Bastedo's writing style quickly and get caught up in the action of Wisp's migration. Understanding the threats migrating birds face and how they battle to overcome them with every journey they undertake is essential for helping migrating birds, and reading Nighthawk! is an enjoyable way to get a personal, intimate understanding of migration.



Photo – Nighthawk in Flight © Paul Hurtado

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