A Better Moment

I had dinner with my folks, and stopped to get some cereal on the way home. Walking across the parking lot in the twilight, I saw some sort of flying critter approaching, jinking around, obviously chasing an insect, and started studying it. OK, not a bat, it had slender, crooked wings, a normal tail, not the slender falcon one, and two distinct white spots on the undersides of its wings. This made it easy to identify, once I got home: a common nighthawk. They're from a family commonly known as goatsuckers or nightjars, and they include the whip-poor-will, which Roger Tory Peterson charmingly describes as "a voice in the night woods." The common nighthawk is also known as a "bullbat," and I don't know how many times I've read that in books without any information about what sort of creature was being talked about. Now I'll know, the next time I read it.