It’s a warm Wednesday evening in the first week of May, and I’m up on the hillside above village having dinner with friends. Not the most likely time for a spot of birdwatching, but “never say never”…
It must have been around 10.30pm. Dark for over an hour, with the usual swarms of flies and moths starting to collect around the lighting in the garden…and then I saw it. Swirling and turning as it chased insects in the lamplight, with a strange looking but oddly familiar silhouette. Falcon? Swift? It could only be one thing…a nightjar!
Summer migrants to Europe, these fascinating birds return each spring to take advantage of the seasonal abundance of night-time moths and other insects. They spend the daylight hours motionless on a branch or on the ground, superbly camouflaged by their intricate, cryptic plumage, stirring at dusk to feed. With long tails and long narrow wings the nightjars are highly specialized nocturnal aerial hunters…a huge gape and bristles at the corners of their mouths form a “trapping funnel” to help them take insects in mid-air. They favour open, sandy heathland and other lightly wooded places, with open clearings where they can hunt after nightfall.
One of western Europe’s more charismatic smaller species of bird then…but which species? The problems start when you get down to southern Spain. The (European) Nightjar is the sole representative of its family over most of western Europe, which ordinarily would make for a fairly easy positive identification. Unfortunately for the birdwatcher a second species, the Red-necked Nightjar, breeds over most of southern Iberia, making the quick “tick” tricky to say the least!
The Red-necked Nightjar is larger and does show rusty red plumage round the throat and collar…but the overall streaky, mottled pattern and their similar habits can cause real problems. The highly distinctive white “signal flashes” on the wingtips and tail, characteristic of the family as a whole, are seen in both sexes but also in the male of the (European) Nightjar, leading to further possible confusion.
Close examination of the distribution maps in the literature would suggest the (European) Nightjar occurs mainly on passage through our region, but it certainly breeds elsewhere in southern Spain and in the first week of May its presence here has to be a possibility. With most sightings coming in poor light after dusk, precise identification can therefore be a real challenge. As is the case with some of Europe’s other closely related species, the two are best separated by their calls and song.
The (European) Nightjar has mechanical, frog-like calls and an amazing, churring reel that apparently can carry for great distances. In contrast, the Red-necked Nightjar female produces a hoarse “tsche…tsche…tsche” that sounds like a steam engine, completely different to the knocking, hollow “ko-tok…ko-tok” of the male.
Extraordinary stuff…but without hearing any calls at all I was no nearer to identifying my mystery nightjar this evening. Not knowing for sure is of course immensely frustrating…we can’t tick either species!…but I think this may be one of those occasions where you just have to enjoy a little bit of nature and leave it at that. Keep checking the posts though…because if we do get some answers, you’ll be the first to know!
