A butterfly on Hawk Hardware.

 The long awaited gloom of a July evening on the West Country heaths as the extended summer day draws to a close. Though distant cars can still be heard they have faded into the ambience now, and I am alone on the earth. The damp, grey day of drizzle is giving way to still summer evening evening, though the sunset is still obscured by grey cloud. These conditions are not perfect, but they will suffice. I'd already been dazzled by the song of a Woodlark perched in one of the small birches which dot the heath, by scuttling Tiger Beetles among the eager blooms of Bell Heather, the Calluna yet to carpet the heath in purple. But there is one denizen of these South Western heaths that I am still waiting to see, waiting to hear. And now the light is fading and the distinct sound I am waiting for has not yet broken. I prepare to give up. Perhaps the weather is not good enough for this icon of warm scented summer nights. I dare to glance at my phone to check the England football result. It is good news. I sigh, irritated at how easily I am distracted. Where is my bird? I begin the walk back toward the car, noticing again the sound of traffic. 

It is as I stroll back that the sound creeps into my awareness. Distant at first, as if in my imagination. A growing, rising purr, perhaps if you had not heard it before you might think it an insect, a stridulating orthopteran of some description. It sounds a little like the tropical frogs you might have heard on nature documentaries, but far longer, uninterrupted, constant. It continues for minutes, rising and falling in volume, slowly but distinctly. The bird who is making it sits invisibly in a birch or one of the feral Scots Pines on the heath, slowly turning its head to project the sound around and about. Then, suddenly, quite unlike how it began, the sound stops. There is a quiet, single clap, and the bird is airborne before me against the sky. Its shape is almost raptor-like, long, pointed wings, a model of sleek grace, but its flight is nothing like a raptor, light, almost floaty, rapid changes of direction, recalling that of a Swallowtail butterfly over the Norfolk fens. A Nightjar! Anything but a Goatsucker, this long range migrant occupies a special place in the UK's avifauna. It is strictly nocturnal, and, by day, almost invisible, roosting stock still, a master of camouflage and concealment, either lengthways on a branch, or down on the ground among the heather. Folk myths give the bird its scientific name, Caprimulgus europaeus, the European Goatsucker. Pure slander, this insectivore has plainly never sucked a goat and never will. It flies like a butterfly with the body of a hawk, and any interest it has in livestock is strictly in the insects they attract and kick up when they move. Perhaps that is the bird's motivation when it approaches me closely, flying around me, and rising up in front of me to take a closer look, before, perhaps realising I have failed to live up to my purpose of attracting flies, he looses interest and flutters on into the rising darkness.

Nightjars are by no means confined to the West Country, though Aylesbeare Common in Devon, where I encountered them last summer, is a prime site for the species, as is lovely Arne in Dorset. They breed in Derbyshire, where their nest sites are kept somewhat quiet to prevent disturbance, and in Nottinghamshire, where they are a popular attraction at Budby Forest, part of Sherwood, as well as in Suffolk, the Brecks and on the Yorkshire Moors. They are, by the relative remoteness of their heathland habitat and their strictly nocturnal lifestyle, often overlooked and quite possibly under-recorded, though the loss of so much heathland over the passing decades has led to serious declines; and was once UK red listed, though it is now on the amber list, as sympathetic management has helped its fortunes. Go out for an evening stroll on open heath or moorland, or even in recently felled forestry habitats, and listen for the magical sound.

The European Nightjar is found in most of Europe and a swathe of central Eastern Asia during the breeding season, and it winters in sub-Saharan Africa. They are among the last Summer migrants to arrive in Spring, often not here until the second week in May. A stroll on the Early May bank holiday is too early, if you hope to catch sight or sound of one. They stay only a little later than the Swifts, and an evening stroll on the August bank holiday is likely to be a fortnight too late. By then they are on their way, flying by night through Europe, feeding and roosting in suitable habitat on the way. I encountered this bird in hand on my first day with the Hellenic Ornithological Society's ringing project on Antikythera in the Aegean. In hand they seem a different bird to the graceful creature on the wing, they have a huge gape, a massive pink maw with which they scoop up the moths and flies upon which they feed, and fringed with sensory whiskers. They have tiny legs, to closely grasp perches to better conceal their outline, and, while entirely without weapons, they hiss and gape, perhaps in imitation of a snake, when annoyed.

 Our Nightjar, Caprimulgus europeaeus, is one of a number of Nightjar species around the world, among the most spectacular is the Standard Winged Nightjar (Caprimulgus longipennis) in which the male trails long, modified feather  flag-tipped streamers behind his wings when he flies. He is resident in the savannahs of Sudan and Ethiopia. In Spain, the Red Necked Nightjar (C. ruficolis) can be found, looking remarkably similar to our, more Northerly species.  The scientific name Caprimulgus derives from the oft-repeated folk myth, that the Nightjar suckles from a goat, but the common name is appropriate, 'jar' being derived from 'churr' a description of the bird's haunting song.

Nightjar in hand in Antikythera, ringed, annoyed and shortly to be released to continue its journey. 

On my walk I enjoy the sound of the Nightjar multiple times, with several churring birds on several perches, and I almost miss a second close approach, within ten feet of my face, fumbling for my phone in the hope of capturing it on video for posterity, though I did record the bird cresting the heather, and its distinctive, buoyant flight.  I did get recordings of the sound and the floaty, butterfly-like flight over the gloomy heath, which I hope are available above if I understand Blogger's video uploading system. I had a truly extraordinary encounter, with a truly remarkable and very special bird. 

A Tale of Two Owls

Gialova, Greece, Sometime in Early August 2011

I’m casting my mind back now to my first encounter with a wild Barn Owl. It was last year, and I was volunteering in Greece, enjoying the summer of my life.  It was July, or early August, and I was with three or four people, young volunteers like me, and we’d been cycling between point counts on our circuit of the Gialova Lagoon.  I’d met and photographed my first Kentish Plover, or “Alexandrinus,” pronounced with a Spanish accent,  as it was known among ourselves, and seen the little fluffy chicks wandering about on the cracked mud on their oversized feet. I remember Cleopatra’s Brimstone butterflies, and Scarce Swallowtails being almost everywhere, and the wide muddy lagoon, never blue like in the postcards, always with the sound of the ripples lapping on the shore. We made our way to a disused fish farm which stood beside the beach, and represented our last point count of the day. I’d already been informed that “Tyto,” as he was known in our quasi-scientific idiom, lived here, and Estela, the HOS Ornithologist, had shown me their wonderfully messy former nest site, in an apparently filthy room upstairs in the old fish farm, with owl pellets and droppings over the wall, and a filthy space in which the owls had raised their chicks a year or two before. But it had been a while since the owls had been seen, apparently, having been familiar to Estela in the months and years previously.  I was at the back of the crowd, scanning the rafters of the old fish farm, happy to have seen a little Athene noctua, which we all enjoyed, when a white shape appeared to drop from the rafters and fly across the hugely spacious room that would have been the main floor of the factory.  It paused on one of the crossbars which held up the roof and, in what was intended as a combination of a whisper and a shout, and futilely, I tried to call back my colleagues to see the owl. White, a little ghostly, utterly silent, and incredibly beautiful, the owl appeared to hear me and was off through a space in the wall.

A couple of days later, on a cool morning before the Mediterranean heat began to beat down, I returned to the old fish farm, a little against the advice of others who warned it could be dangerous. I should stress looking for owls in abandoned buildings in the small hours of the morning, and alone, is not something this blogger recommends. I sat down on a pile of rubble in the main body of the building and waited for “Tyto.” It was about six in the morning, the same time we carried out our bird monitoring at the lagoon. It will come as no surprise, that, any paranoia about homeless drug dealers chasing conservation volunteers out of the fish farm in the morning quickly abated, and I fell asleep.
I woke up what must have been about an hour later and already the sun was high and the air was beginning to get quite warm. I rose to my feet and looked about. “Tyto” was only a few metres away, and when he saw me move, he took to the wing in a second, but, perhaps curious about me, he alighted in the far corner of the room. I approached him a little, inching forward, and I raised my camera and extended my lens. In the dim light of the fish factory, I needed a steady hand, but I managed to take a single record shot before he moved off, his broad, white wings carrying him silently through his gap between wall and ceiling, and away out of sight.

Tyto alba, Gialova Lagoon, August 2011

4^th June 2012

I’d been trying to shake an inexplicable feeling of immense mild awkwardness and irritation all day. It was the evening, and I decided to throw my bike around Pages Wood, part of the Millennium Community woodlands project, operated by the Forestry Commission, and set between Upminster and Harold Wood, beside the busy Southend Arterial Road.  Young trees have been planted on former farmland, with a few old trees dominating as standards. The river Ingrebourne flows through it, lined with just such oak standards. As it reaches the side of the dual carriageway, a small network of hedges with a few standards spreads out, a bridge crosses the Ingrebourne and the path continues across meadows in which Horses are periodically grazed.  I rode laps of the track, I wasn’t birding, merely having a bit of a ride to blow out the cobwebs on a pleasant, sunny evening. I paused beside the river to watch the swallows picking off insects from the little living clouds which danced above it. I saw a couple of green woodpeckers, pecking about in the grass, the flowery meadows which line what will one day become, when the trees are more mature, the woodland rides, and I heard the Jackdaws alarm calling each time a dog passed them.

The light had begun to fade and I decided to cross the Ingrebourne and head back up the A127 to get home. As I did so, between the mature oak trees, I saw a white bird, very briefly, and I wondered what it was. The view was brief, it could even have been a white pigeon, but I moved forward a little to get a closer look. As the bird reappeared, its identity became clear. It had long, broad wings, was bigger than a pigeon, and its shape was unmistakeable. The flat faces of owls, honed by evolution to channel sound to their remarkable ears, give them a unique appearance in profile. It was a white lady, of medieval superstition, a barn owl, white and angelic against the fading light! I moved on a little, as the owl flew out of sight. I positioned myself on the path with a good vista of the dark green oaks and the buttercup infested meadow, and waited. I didn’t have to wait long. The owl reappeared, making another hunting pass low in front of the trees, eyes fixed on the ground, in search of the mice and voles on which they feed. She rounded a small Hawthorn on the meadow and, for a moment, was flying straight at me. She turned and I attempted to reel off a couple of shots with the DSLR, but as I raised it she saw me and turned tail, drifting silently over the trees and away to the East, where more woodland stood, before the trees gave way to urban parkland and sprawl. She was gone, and I had only blurry long shots on the camera, but she was beautiful, and my first British barn owl.  The experience was almost spiritual, the barn owl, a childhood favourite and ghostly beauty, floating over these woods and meadows on the cusp of London’s metropolis, something so wild, so beautiful, so revered and feared over the years for her unique colour and crepuscular habits. It was with a much less heavy heart that I made my way home in the fading light of a beautiful June evening, across the community woodland past the dog walkers, and the rubbish strewn bridge over the Arterial Road.

Barn Owl, Pages Wood, near Upminster, Essex, England, June 4th 2012

Wild flower Meadows at Pages Wood.

The Mature Trees into which she disappeared, Pages Wood.