Viewing entries tagged
Nightjar

Shape Conforming

I hope you’re not getting tired of hearing about Nightjar but honestly I don’t care haha. Spending time with one species, learning more about their characteristics and behaviour is what I love and it’s the only way you’ll ever get a chance of photographing this species in the day. I’m now on my 4th pair and my 7th individual (yet to locate the female of the 4th pair). I find it interesting that each pair has chosen a different type of habitat, or at-least the same habitat at different stages.

  1. 3-4 Year Old clear-fell, mostly small-medium sized trees

  2. 1 year old clear-fell, only bracken, grass.

  3. 3 year old clear-fell, mostly grassland, bracken and heath

  4. 3 year old clear-fell, totally rocky habitat with bracken between.

It goes to show how versatile they are, so long as there is suitable habitat around them for moths, they’ll roost almost anywhere there’s suitable cover.
The pair that’s chosen the rocky habitat is the one that I’m most interested in, as he’s also choosing to roost on rocks, rather than logs/sticks. If you look closely, even the shape of his back appears to match the shape of the rock. I wonder if this is strategic? Shape conforming is common amongst species that rely on camouflage to survive and they do appear to match their chosen roost spot. If on the end of a log, they’ll sit tall, short, tail town as if they’re part of the end of that log. If they sit across a stick, they’ll sit in the same direction and flatten themselves out.

As a contrast, here’s the female of pair number 3 showing that typical flattened out pose that matches the long shape of a stick. I loved this chosen roost spot, but it’s doubtful she’ll use it again though as she looks ready to burst. I’m surprised she hasn’t laid yet. Maybe she has and her first clutch failed? I hope that isn’t the case.


I’ve also been studying their vocalisations but I’ve needed a few years worth of field recordings on Nightjar, in order to confirm a theory that you can identify individual males by their song. The way you would do this is to work out the average BPM, length of phrases and also the frequency of both exhale and inhale.
I’ve collected so far at-least 6 different males, though I’ve focused on returning to the same territory for the last 2 years in the hope to confirm it with one individual male. So far it looks like I can confirm this theory, as I’m finding only a 0.8 difference between the BPM recorded in 2017 to present day. A couple more years worth of recording Males and I should be able to give more weight to this theory.
The analysis is actually pretty easy and could even be done in the field so long as you had a laptop to return to. I’ll publish more details about my methods at the end of the season.

Nightjar Identification

Forgotten Silence

I’ll start this blog with a picture from yesterday female ‘Lichen’ who has just a week left before her eggs hatch. She’s been a great mother so far, sitting in this horrific wet weather. I’ve kept an eye on her as I honestly thought that the ditch she was in would fill with water but luckily it hasn’t. I should have more faith in her nest location choice, they clearly know what they’re doing. 

Female Nightjar - Lichen

Female Nightjar - Lichen


I’ve spent more time sound recording this year than I have taking photo’s, but it’s mainly been for research rather than creating presentable audio. Listening to the world through an amplified microphone, does have two different affects on me. It mainly helps me focus on isolated sounds, focusing my brain on one thing which helps drown out noise-pollution. It can also however make you more aware of noise, as when the bird stops singing, all you’re left with is the sounds of over-head planes, distant traffic, or the roaring sound of off-road motorbikes. Finding locations that are noise-free in Gwent, is becoming near impossible. Is there any wonder that the world is suffering from the highest number of depression cases ever recorded?

A lack of understanding from the governments of the world regarding sound-pollution is mostly because ‘sound’ for them is some unquantifiable measure of consequences that cannot be contained.

This is so far from the truth! We need to approached the subject in a different manner and a start would be to recognise sound for what it really is, and that is Pressure.
No matter what the sound is, big or small, we receive that sound via pressure to our ears drums, and that pressure signal is interpreted by the brain. Our brains work so hard to filter out bad sound pressure, but it’s a battle we’re going to lose. This is why thousands like me escape to the countryside, to try and experience natures gift of silence. In many places we’ve lost it already, but it’s not too late.

There have been some huge milestones recently in the fight against noise-pollution - https://us.whales.org/2018/07/03/noise-pollution-chronically-stresses-whales-and-dolphins/
Marine scientists have been studying Whale sounds for decades and with thousands of Whales washing up on our beaches every year, finally it was proven that military-sonar was the cause. Sound travels much further under water, and as a result, much of our marine life has evolutionary adaptations to exploit this

While it’s a good thing that the world is being forced to think about air and water pollution, we also need to fight the corner for noise and light pollution too. We need protected zones all around the globe where traffic is diverted so we can minimise our impact on natural silence. Hopefully one day we’ll have silent zones close to home that are protected also but for now, it’s my goal to seek these locations out for my own mental health.

This video is a couple years old now, but please watch it. It highlights many of the things I’ve mentioned.

Nightjar and Firecrest Progress

Despite having a tough year so far, both financially and with my health, I still feel privileged to spend my free time with nature, and even more privileged to spend most of that time with Firecrests and Nightjar this season. I started the season collecting Firecrest recordings as I wanted to learn more about their mimicking behaviour. There are still many unanswered questions but I’ll update on this soon.

I’ve since got a little distracted, as Nightjar season has well and truly started. It’s almost a full time Job to keep track of the birds roosting patterns. You’ve got to be extremely cautious and committed to find roosting nightjar. Cautious because you don’t want to cause any disturbance, especially now in breeding season but also because they will inevitably see you long before you see them and flushing them is simply not an option if you wish to ever see them again. It’s a huge trust exercise and they need to learn that you are not a threat, so trampling thru breeding habitat hoping to find one is asking for problems. It’s knowing where they won’t be rather than knowing exactly where they are. I’m so glad I read up on these birds and took some great advice off experts as the last thing I would want is for my presence to have a negative impact on their breeding success. As a result I’ve witnessed some fabulous behaviour and characteristics of individual birds.

Meet Blackbeard, The male from pair no1. He prefers to roost in dense cover and as a result I’ve decided to leave him alone this season as there’s no way of approaching him silently. I’ve called him Blackbeard as he’s considerably darker than all my other Nightjars. Not just his throat, but the stripe down his breast, around his lower eye and also down his back is quite dark. He’s generally more rufous with a wider range of colours.

Blackbeard (Male no1)

Blackbeard (Male no1)

This is his current Female that I’ve named ‘bark’ as she prefers tree stumps and has consistent colouration from head to tail like tree bark without any lichen. Not a very feminine name I know but it’s descriptive enough for me to ID in the field. She was my first ever self found Nightjar. She’s now sitting on eggs but is also in deep cover so this pair I tend to enjoy watching at night only, from a vantage point, rather than pursue them in the day time and possibly cause disturbance.

Female no1

The second pair is a complete different ball-game, and are much easier to approach without making too much noise. They’re both roosting close to the ground but he likes logs or even plastic tree guards. She’s about 10 meters away in a small ditch and is now also sitting on two eggs. I’ve named male no2 silverback due to his overall light shade of grey. He was proving to be quite an attentive partner but since we’ve been having heavy rain, he’s taken to a more sheltered part of the forestry 60+ meters away which is very dry. Do you blame him? I don’t. The female however has no choice but to endure the elements till nightfall where the male then brings her food or they’ll swap over so she can feed. I do wonder if Silverback has gone off with another female while she’s been sat on the eggs as there is a female even closer to his current dry roost that’s been landing on the path and wagging her tail in front of him. He has shown interest in her so it wouldn’t surprise me if he did copulate with her too, this is common with Nightjars. Once his original female has hatched her eggs however, he should take over parental duties when the chicks are large enough, at which point he will copulate with her again, and she’ll lay a second brood elsewhere. The saying, ‘don’t put all your eggs in one basket’ is a literal strategy for these birds and in doing this, they increase their chances of survival, even if only one chick manages to fledge.

This pair is a reminder that they’re so vulnerable to predators on the ground, whether it’s snakes, other birds, deer, badgers, foxes, mice, PEOPLE.. there’s so much out there that seek to kill them, which is why they invest so much (or so little) energy into keeping up their ‘log’ act. It’s vital they aren’t seen moving in the day time. Not so easy when you’re soaking wet and cold, or boiling hot in the sun with insects crawling over you.

Below is female no2 which I’m now going to call ‘lichen’ as the contrast of her dark shoulder really makes the lighter wing strips stand out, like a patch of lichen on a branch. She also has quite short wings and a more rounded shorter head than the Male who has a long, flat head shape. Their shape does vary as they manipulate their plumage in different positions but these features are generally unmistakable in the field once you’ve spent some time with them. This is her below sitting on the eggs, it’s a cropped image and from quite far off as I’d rather not disturb her.

Lichen Nightjar Female Sitting

This next bit might make some laugh, but I certainly didn’t find it funny at the time, but a group of young irresponsible adults bumped into me one night while recording Nightjar at dusk. They didn’t bother me at first and showed very little interest in what I was doing but they did turn the music up louder in their car to annoy me. What they did next though questions their insanity.., as they must have drove all the way home, picked up a family members wind instrument (possibly trumpet), with the intent on coming back up the mountain so they could destroy any chance of me getting clean recordings. Take a listen below, you couldn’t have made this up honestly.. Skip to the end..It’s actually hilarious the more I think about it. I just can’t believe the measures some people are willing to take to disrupt other peoples lives.

Between the trumpets, I was watching quite a few bats on the wing while watching the Nightjar and all I could hear thru my headphones were the faint sound of beating wings. I did wonder if my Telinga Microphone could actually pick up such high frequencies and it turns out, IT CAN! After slowing my recording down in Logic Pro X, I was able to pick out each ‘tweet’ that the bats were producing. These tweets are not audible without slowing the recording down but i’m amazed how much detail I was able to capture. It makes me wonder how many bats are in my previous recordings and the only way of telling would be to lower the pitch or slow the recordings down. I’ve always wanted to record bat sound but always thought I would need a Bat detector to do so.

I do have 3 other pairs of Nightjar that I know roughly where they’re roosting but you need to spend weeks observing them before considering yomping thru their habitat. Please be responsible, all breeding birds are protected and I would not be pursuing them if I wasn’t 100% sure I could do so without disturbance.

Born from Destruction

I find it hard to explain just how much I love Nightjars but hopefully by the end of this blog you’ll understand why.

The title sounds a bit dramatic, and that’s because the Nightjar for me is much more than just a cool looking bird that makes an unworldly sound. This bird for me is a reminder that even in a world full of environmental destruction, there are animals out there that have adapted to an ever changing landscape.

The Nightjar has done just this, by using clear-felled woodland to their advantage, as the bare ground, twigs, logs and cut stumps make for a perfect place to blend in and a perfect place to breed. The regrowth of these (often upland) clear-fells bring all kinds of plants, from heather, foxgloves, bracken, broom, gorse and native broadleaf trees, all of which are great for moths and insects which the Nightjar specialising in eating on the wing during the night. In the night they eat and drink on the wing, opening their mouth wide like a Swift and skimming lakes, tree tops and low vegetation for food and drink.

Below is a picture of my first self found Nightjar but hopefully not the last of the season. I have 6 pairs between two locations that I’m keeping an eye on. I hope to record enough male songs to confirm a theory that you can identify males by their BPM. This is a female, so she won’t be using this roost every day, especially once she lays her eggs as she will then incubate on the ground never to be seen again as the ground is mostly dead bracken which she blends into even more! The male was close by. He’s never too far away during this period as he will watch guard over them both. I hope to locate the male later on in the year once they’ve officially began breeding as it’s still early days yet and he’s still copulating with her.

I’ve shared this recording before but it’s still the best one I’ve captured so far, with perfect weather conditions and capturing the song from beginning to end.

If it wasn’t for the new green growth of the green bracken, I don’t think I would have spotted her at all.

I hope to get more opportunities but the most important thing for me at this stage is to ensure I don’t disturb them breeding so I’m going to let them settle in and see how the season goes. I might also continue to look for the other 5 local pairs and may even explore some new clear-fells in the valley to see if they’re attracting Nightjar yet. Either way, it’s quite exciting to finally get time in the day with these birds as I’ve spent so much time watching them in the night, it’s nice to see them in full light.

Busy but Happy!

It's been a while since I blogged. So much has happened in this time of course, but not too much on the photography side of things. I am sporting a new Tripod however for my telephoto setup so looking forward to trying that out in the field soon. 

I've been working in Pembroke and Swansea for the last couple of weeks chasing wildlife for Iolo's new urban wildlife series for BBC Wales, It's been really tough trying to track down urban otters, so far without much luck, but it's not over yet. We still have autumn and winter to film and I'm absolutely loving my time there! The best part is having wildlife on my mind 100% of the time. Literally a dream Job come true, I still can't quite believe it. 

Below you'll notice a picture of a Nightjar from a session I had a couple weeks ago, thanks to a good friend Gary Howells. I'm so sad however to come back from Pembroke this week and to find out that the Nightjar spot has been set on fire. The very roosting perch you see in the photo is burnt to a crips. I've also come back to my neighbours cat killing everything that moves, with several dead animals in my garden, most of which are birds and amphibians from my pond. Refusing to put a bell collar on, this isn't over. I'm not prepared to watch this massacre, and then be on the beckon call every time they have an injured bird in their garden for me to look after. Enough is enough, things need to change, and people need to start taking responsibility for the destructive nature of their pets. Everything you see below will cease to exist if people turn a bind eye to problems like these. 

Anyway, without getting too depressive, enjoy the photo's! I'm trying to bring more colour into my portfolio, I hope you can notice this in my recent macro pictures. 

Magical Moments

For me, there is nothing that compares to the cryptic patterns and mysterious life style of the Nightjar. They are amongst a family of birds that mesmerise even the most experienced birders all over the world. They aren't glamorous, they certainly not colourful, they don't have sharp claws and rip apart pheasants, but they do have an in-built comb on a claw to keep their whiskers in top condition. 

Until now, I've not been able to show you these birds up close, partly because I'm yet to find a day time roost myself! Gary Howells however made this dream come true having found this beautiful roosting Male on his patch. I can't thank him enough for getting me this opportunity. 

Incase you haven't heard one before, here's a sound recording from two years back at Wentwood Forest. 

The Incredible Nightjar

It's always a good day when you learn something new about your favourite bird species. This month I've had a few nights observing them in my home town and I was fortunate to observe new behaviour too. Just as it was getting too dark to photograph, a male started to court a perched female on the ground. The display started with wing flapping while perched and tail wagging, she seemed to wag her tail in his face, as if to say she's ready, hurry up and get on with it. What came after that was something I've never seen before, as the male was 'stone hopping' and flying over her head back and forth from a pile of rocks. The only time I've seen this type of behaviour is in Birds of Paradise in the Amazon rainforest! It was incredible to watch what seemed like a very complex display, something they would have to perform as early as possible before it got too dark. That said, they do have incredible eye site, how else would they manage to catch flying moths in complete darkness?!. 

Male Nightjar taken at Sunset over Pontypool 

Male Nightjar taken at Sunset over Pontypool 

Big thanks to Craig Constance for sharing this twitter post with me, as Jack Potter posted a fantastic close up image of the Nightjar's claw-comb! Yes! A claw that has a built in comb, used to maintain their stiff whiskers that help them direct Moths into their mouth while flying. It's reasons like this that I love being an amateur naturalist as there's so much more to learn which keeps fuelling what is going to be a life long passion. What an incredible species!

Nightjar Remastered

Nightjar Remastered

Back in the Summer of 2016.. I spent a few weeks returning to a known Nightjar hotspot in order to not just record a churring male Nightjar, but to do so in optimum recording conditions where there was little to no wind noise in the background. For those that have waited in the darkness to hear or see a glimpse of these iconic birds, you'll already know how hard it is to withstand the biting of thousands of midges, while trying to hear what at first sounds like a distant swarm of locusts riding the sound of the wind. That is of course till you get up close and hear just how peculiar the sound of the Nightjar really, especially for a bird. Individual male nightjars can be identified by analysing the rate and length of the pulses in their songs, so if I were to ever get this chance again in the same location, I could analyse my recordings to work out if it's the same male returning to the territory each year. It certainly would make a fascinating study. 

This sound has always baffled me, especially due to the way they use the song, sometimes singing for more than 10 minutes straight without taking a pause. They've learned to breath at the same time as churring, which is pretty incredible in itself. The very frequency of a Nightjars song and the way in which it produces these frequencies allow it to travel great distances, travelling up to 600 meters! (2,000 ft) in good conditions and easily heard at the 200 meter range.

I've shared this recording before, but I've remastered it, taking a lot of the filters off that I used to use. You can now hear it in it's true Raw form with background noise also. If you have good speakers or headphones, I'd recommend using them. 
 

Nightjar!!! Get your headphones!

If you've been watching Springwatch, you would have seen the short clip about the Nightjars found on the Heathland at Minsmere Nature Reserve. Nightjars are by far my favourite birds, and for so many different reasons. Everything about them, sound, sight and behaviour, fascinates me! 

I've been working really hard, spending many late nights being eaten alive. All those hours spent outdoors in the pitch black being eaten paid off tonight and I can't even wait till the morning to show you! Please put your headphones on, this isn't one you want to miss! 

 

It doesn't really get much better than this.. and I'm not blowing my own trumpet here, I simply mean that this bird performed so well for me! I had the classic wind clapping, the Male call topped off by a full song and ending in a thunderous applause while winding down. 

If there was anything I could do to protect these birds and ensure we hold onto them for as long as we can, I would do anything!. To have them on our own doorstep is so amazing and I'll be spending many more nights watching them display, feeding and listening to that incredible sound that comes over you like a wave and washes all your troubles away. #bliss

Male Nightjar

I did also manage to witness some mating behaviour and I'll talk about this in another blog. I also managed to capture the sound of the female! Which isn't something many people talk about because its not as 'fancy' as the males bold song. I've personally never heard a female until tonight but i'm sure I'll learn more and more about these birds as time goes on. 

Nightjar & Llandegfedd

What a hilarious way to start July! Nightjar Monitoring went really well, we recorded atleast 2 singing males and this time didn't get bit by the mozzies! ;) In other news, Llandegfedd prior to the Nightjar walk was awesome! Managed to just about capture a Sparrowhawk take a Juvi Pied Wagtail off a perch and our first sign of movement in the form of a Little Egret, Common Sandpiper, Artic Terns and Redshank.