Snospurven! Snow Buntings, Plectrophenax nivialis, and all I know about them.

 At the lower station of the Cairn Gorm funicular railway, just above Loch Morlich, not far from Aviemore and part of Britain’s most noted Ski resort, there is a small, and usually astoundingly busy car park, surrounded by high end tat shops and various small, ski-related enterprises.  Emma and I visited the Cairngorms’ eponymous mountain in the hope of catching up with the confiding Ptarmigan for which the lower slopes are noted. The heavens had, the night before, dumped impressive volumes of snow on the towering landscape, and, though some paths up to the Slopes were already well trodden, the mountains, for miles, were coated in a thick, deep blanket of white, softening their ragged edges. Snow brings a curious sense of silence, and seemed to dampen the hubbub of excited skiers, and we looked down on a winter wonderland, snow hanging in the branches of the pine woods of Rothiemurchus, all the way down to the loch shore and beyond.

Snow Bunting, Cairn Gorm, March 2023

There were, despite this being apparently the only centre of human activity for miles here, special, and especially beautiful, birds here. A small band of Snow Buntings perched on the sloping roof of the ski centre. They fluttered down to pick about in the snow beside the green, angular, corrugated iron structure, flashing black and white wings. They allowed close approach, unafraid of the people around. Eventually a small crowd of photographers, armed with long lenses, gathered, and the Snow Buntings were keen and obliging models. Charming birds of high altitudes and the high arctic, last time I visited the flock, apparently a fairly regular fixture around the lower car park and the higher Ptarmigan restaurant during the winter months, had already melted away to their breeding sites high up in the crags. Flocking, and moving around these lower slopes, and being confiding, are winter behaviours. They nest high in the rocky landscapes, males singing atop deserted and windswept crags, where people very seldom tread. Arctic/alpine specialists, they breed right up into Arctic Norway, Arctic Russia, Iceland and Arctic Canada, places of icy extremes. When I visited Arctic Norway, in high summer, ‘Snospurven,’ a ‘common breeding bird,’ were nowhere to be seen.  Both sexes become whiter in summer, as they feed around the snow line, grabbing the insects which drift up on thermals, to find themselves dropped just above the snow line, an easy meal for the Snow Buntings to take back to their chicks.  During the last ice age they thrived across Europe. What impact climate change will have on such specialists as these remains to be seen.

Snow Buntings, Cairn Gorm, March 2023

Britain’s only breeding Snow Buntings are the few hundred pairs in the highlands, but in winter, more do appear in the country, and tend to choose a habitat which couldn’t be more different to the Cairngorms. They gather in small parties on stony ground, usually on shingle beaches, and are a regular fixture in some spots along the East coast. Here, their white-and-sandy winter plumage provides remarkable camouflage, blending readily with the Carstone and iron stained Hunstanton chalk pebbles of North Norfolk.  Here too they can be confiding, on a recent trip to Titchwell it was a joy to find these small and cheerful little birds scuttling around our feet. They can turn up as far South as Kent and Essex, but favour the North and East, making landfall at night as they cross the North Sea from Scandinavia and beyond, from places which make the North Norfolk winter seem mild.

Snow Bunting on the beach at Titchwell, Norfolk, December 2022

When we returned from our fruitless trudge through the snow on Cairngorm, without having seen a Ptarmigan, and a pair of noisy, cronking Raven the only new species on our day list of two species, we found 30 or so Snow Buntings now gathered, and a small crowd of photographers admired them, from just a couple of metres away.  What a privilege to encounter such charming and special birds, at such close quarters.

Cairn Gorm in the Snow. 

Snow Bunting.

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.