Viewing entries tagged
Monitoring

Nightjar + Updates

Some good news, some bad news, such is the nature of nest monitoring. In this woodland I have 7 pairs, but I’ve only managed time to find 3 nests so far. 2 of these nests are doing great, both with two chicks and both getting bigger each day, but as the nest gets smell from droppings from both the parents and young, it starts to attract predators, and the worse happened for my 3rd pair that seemed to get their chicks to a decent age, but the nest was found empty, with just a few chick feathers that were broken off. I didn’t have a camera on this nest so it’s difficult to know what the cause was, but this pair failed their first clutch last year also and managed to start again with their second clutch fledging one chick. Below is a male that I’ve come to call Midnight, as he’s particularly dark compared to my other males. Males are usually darker than females, but this guy takes it to another level. He’s the male of the failed pair, so is now sticking close to the female again where-ever she may go, so that they can start over. He’s even roosting on Rocks which makes sense now the nights are getting cooler as that extra warmth sitting on a rock that’s been baking in the sun all day will most certainly give them an extra boost of energy at sundown.

I don’t usually photograph birds on the nest, but I've been getting requests to see the chicks on Facebook so here we go. There are two showing in the photo, but the second is much harder to spot. They’re just getting too big to stay underneath Mum, and it this time lines up perfectly with their adult plumage coming into play, so they are becoming less dependant on mothers superior camouflage.

We’re so lucky in Gwent to have such a variety of fauna and flora and I don’t appreciate it half as much as I should whilst I’m out and about. Usually too busy to stop and observe the ground, especially when you’re focuses on Nightjar, you get a little tunnel vision, but it’s surprising what you do find if you just set aside a bit of time. There are some species that you just need to make the time for, like the Scarce Blue-tailed Damselflies in upland Gwent ponds, if you don’t look, you won’t find them, but there are other species that you just need to get lucky with, and luck was on our side as a Silver-washed Fritillary was sapping moisture and minerals from a clay patch right next to the car along Albion road, pontypool.

Sound Recording

I’ll start with a mystery, and if you do have an idea of what this begging sound might be, please get in touch as I’ve suspected many things but cannot find any reference material that matches.

There were a few Woodcock roding so I thought it might be a begging chick but I’m honestly not convinced it’s even a bird at this rate. This is the first decent recording I’ve got of a roding Woodcock but I’ll try to improve on this next season as it’s a very cool sound.

The star of the show was of course this beautiful performance off this Male Nightjar that does have a very distinctive song, where the inhale section of the song, also described as the minor phrase, is quite low pitched in comparison to its major phrase, making him identifiable, even by ear, so long as you know what you’re listening out for.

Throughout the season I have been observing Goshawks nearby that have been taking food back and forth, so I suspected at the time they were nesting quite close but till now I’ve kept my distance as I’m not scheduled and I have no interest in disturbing them, but in the last few weeks the chicks have fledged and are venturing much further away from the nest site, so it was a matter of time walking the woodland paths that I eventually came within reach of my recording gear. This is why I love sound recording with a Telinga Dish, as unlike photography, you don’t actually need to see the bird to appreciate it, which allows you to appreciate wildlife from a much greater distance.

Nocmig

I’ll end with a few updates from my Nocmig recordings, which have just started to pick up again as birds are starting their autumn migration.

So far I’ve had Little Ringed Plover, Oystercatcher and a few morning extra’s in the form of Swift, Linnet and Raven, which I don’t usually get here.

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.