Nightjar Watching on Mutters Moor.
Third time lucky. The first outing was cancelled because of the extreme heat ….never had that one before, the second was thunderstorms forecast …….I didn’t want any of my group becoming a newspaper headline, like “Seniors group member struck by lightning whilst late night Nightjar watching”.
So on Thursday evening at 9.30 pm, 12 of us assembled up at Mutters Moor on a warm, bright evening to hopefully hear this weird sound called “churring” coming from and seeing this equally weird looking bird called a Nightjar.
For the first 10 or 15 minutes we heard and saw absolutely nut’n. Not even a frog coughing. But then we started to hear some churring coming from afar, then some churring coming from behind us, becoming louder and louder.
Then we saw one fly over the hedge and doing it’s wing “clapping” display as it went around the heathland arena and the performance began. We didn’t know where to look. Some of us were seeing birds to the right of us, some of were seeing them to the left, and then there were those in front. We didn’t really know how many we saw but we did see three together more than once but I’m sure there were more.
But then there was a lull so we thought it was time to go home for that nightcap or that cup of cocoa to warm us up. Many of us feeling the benefit of having a light coat to put on in the late summer's evening.
Janet Fernley
Short Video of Nightjars in flight, courtesy of Martin
youtube.com/@Sidmouthu3a
Nightjar Photograph
The photo is not one of ours but as they fly at night and are speedy little beggars, this may be the only way to actually see what one looks like.