One of the more fascinating birds of spring is the Lesser Nighthawk, coming out of Mexico and Central America in March to fly over our Southwest deserts in the low light of the evening and early morning. We were reminded of this great bird from a post to the San Diego Birds listserv. As you'll see from the maps below, it is just staring to arrive. (photo by J.N. Stuart, via Flickr)

Here are sightings for February of this year. As you can see, the bird is still concentrated in Mexico and Central America (as always, these great maps come courtesy of eBird, a terrific resource for birders and conservation):

This map shows sightings so far in March 2012. You can see it moving northward:

To give you an indication of where this is going, take a look at the picture at the end of March 2011:

And then April of 2011, when the bird had arrived: