Nightjar a-glow

There are some things which no matter how much time is spent, or how many hours absorbed in a task, or how many times a plan is hatched and re-enacted, the end product is zero. Though to be fair although the end product in this case was brilliant, capturing that brilliance on a camera was less than perfect. I'm talking of the European nightjar, Caprimulgus europaeus.

I've watched nightjar for many years now and they never cease to amaze me. For many of those years my preferred location was a well known site on the Mendip Hills in Somerset. Close to twenty five years ago now I visited this site with an excellent naturalist and BBC Natural History Unit cameraman, I was also friends with his partner who joined us. This was my first encounter with the fern-owl or goatsucker, just two of the many country names for this bird. In those days it was deemed acceptable to flick a white cloth in the air to attract a male nightjar intent on booting out any interloper to its territory. And we did just that mimicking the white tail feathers of the bird, though today this is very much frowned upon. However that flick and clap elicited what had been the very best and closest encounter with these deeply fascinating birds. Until that is last weekend which I'll come to.

Another site in the northern part of Somerset provides astonishing nightjar flying and churring but to be honest as it has a precipitous climb back down from the site in pitch darkness it is not one of my favourite locations. And so during the pandemic when we were prevented from going out I did a little research. Which brought me to the Quantock Hills in West Somerset.

I'm not going to name the site as somehow I feel the nightjar there will benefit being left to get on with their own world, though I later learnt that regular nightjar-evenings do happen here. 

It was early last year when Mrs Wessex Reiver and I did a reconnaissance visit arriving two or three hours before sunset. I had some basic instructions but this is a huge site of moorland, woodland, steep valley and everything in-between. With a picnic in the rucksack we wandered about the myriad of pathways aslant the hill. Nothing looked suitable in terms of habitat until we stumbled across a picnic bench. Unpacking the egg and cress sandwiches and ripe apple for desert it struck me while sitting here  "this looks as likely a spot as anywhere".  In the absence of a better idea we made use of the picnic bench and waited as the sun began to set. Half an hour after sunset we heard a brief churring at some distance, then followed by the contact 'choo-weep' call. There it was again. Walking towards the churring it became louder and clearer. We stopped, the churring stopped then as I'd hoped a clap-clap sound, another 'choo-weep' call and behind us from whence we'd just walked a male nightjar flew over the path silhouetted against the sky and away to churr at some distance. Success.

Now knowing where they are to be found we returned three or four times last year and on each visit the same behaviour happened in the same area in roughly the same sequence.

First there's a low volume short churr just before the sun sets. This is brief and often not repeated. It is possibly the male and female contact churring if they are brooding on the nest scrape, pair bonding as they swap positions. To be honest I don't know for sure. Nothing of real note happens until around 25 minutes after sunset.  Suddenly as if a switch is flicked on a churr just begins and lasts for minutes. Then it will stop with a whoop-whee-whoop call like an old fashioned turntable losing power mid track, followed by wing claps and then silence. I now know enough at this site to anticipate this is the male about to take flight. Mostly from the same area, over our heads and into some isolated trees some way off. From here churring can continue for ten minutes, before again a clap clap, whoop-whee-whoop and if we're lucky we'll see him disappear in flight towards the valley. 

That valley is interesting as on most of the occasions we visit we can hear up to half a dozen churring nightjar all around. Not all the time and of course some may be moving about, but certainly a small number are here. On one fine, warm and still evening I took a parabolic microphone to the site and gained some useful audio of the churring, mixed with the bells ringing in the village below. Quite atmospheric as the bells struck eleven.

On another evening last year unlike Coleridge who was disturbed by a Person from Porlock, we met a dogwalker from Bridgwater. A somewhat surreal experience talking to a stranger in near darkness with nightjar churring about all around us. He was visiting his mother and knew the area well from childhood. He mentioned that in years past the males would lek up on the high moor after leaving their territories across the Quantocks and in the valleys. I've not come across any literature of nightjar lekking but it seems plausible for this elusive and  intriguing bird as there is so much that remains unknown about them, such as the infanticide filmed on the BBC's Springwatch this year. A scientific if gruesome first. That lekking however would be something to see and while we had planned to try and see this this year other needs got in the way around the time of the nightjars arrival in mid May. I fear it is too late now in the season.

Which brings me to 2023. I wrote of our first visit over the May Spring Bank Holiday on this site a month or so back. Our second visit in early June wasn't brilliant for nightjar activity. There was the usual churring and wing clapping but within five minutes all activity moved onto the valley and out of sight. However that did bring one treat in finding a glow-worm. I'd not seen one shining for years, not since Mrs Wessex Reiver moved from Wiltshire where they were common near her home shining brightly between the railway ballast at Little Bedwyn. Interestingly there, and presumably elsewhere, they switched their lights off as a train approached and only relit them once it had long passed.

The latest visit was after a hot and bothersome humid day last weekend. Even driving to the site at 9pm the car thermometer showed 22oC. Our arrival coincided with the sunset at 9.30pm, but it was still very light. Moments later we were at our usual vantage spot.  Only five minutes or so later the first churring, that then stopped. A few minutes later more churring this time accompanied by the whoop-whee-whoop call.. And then over our heads like a large flapping bat the male flew low over to some often used trees behind us. Churring began. For the following half an hour we were entertained by two nightjar churring and changing position in a wide figure of eight pattern. I'm not sure whether it was the warm weather or the stillness of the night but these birds were very active and kept us on our toes. Brief glimpses of them flying between churring posts were regular. One even perched on a dead tree in a perfect nightjar silhouette.  We walked a little nearer but as it flew off it was joined by another nightjar (by now it was too dark to see more than the shapes) and the pair flitted and flapped up and down the ride only a few feet above our heads. Not since that first sighting on the Mendips twenty five years ago have I experienced such a close fly by of a nightjar, and never for so long. In all this activity (I think there could have been three individuals here) lasted for over 45 minutes before they all headed towards the valley. Even as we walked to our valley view-point another nightjar flew over us. Simply magical and we were surprised on checking our phones that it was now well past eleven o'clock.

We didn't want to leave while the churring in the valley was continuing and churring behind our viewpoint was also continuing. Eventually though fatigue and a 30 mile drive to come made us think of heading home.

It was once back home that I looked at a couple of films I'd taken on my mobile phone, mostly taken to record the sound. One however showed a very brief fly past of a nightjar that I'd not noticed at the time, very much blink and you'll miss it. But another film had a longer flight I'd seen but thought I'd failed to capture. The two images above are stills taken from the film. It is hard to see in the first one so in the second one I've circled the nightjar (that feint black speck) and its direction of flight. This second clip is lovely as I've got the churring, the calling, the wing flap and then the flight, ending in the bird perching out of sight and calling 'choo-weep'.

Nothing matches being there in the darkness listening to this astonishing bird going about its business, but the films help me remember the behavioural sequence which is repeated time and time again. We should be able to return a couple more times before they head back to Africa and I can't wait. I never ever tire of standing in a plantation after dark and experiencing this phenomenal bird. I just need a camera that can match that experience too.

Large Blue Is On The Wing

 Despite the forecast suggesting an increasing risk of thunderstorms and thick heavy cloud I decided on the spur of the moment to head down to a butterfly reintroduction site in south Somerset. My quest today was to see if the large blue [Phengaris arion] butterfly was on the wing - I was not disappointed.

I last visited this site two years ago when after a sizzling few hours of frustratingly seeing but being unable to photograph large blues, I realised later when at home that I had actually managed to take a photograph of a motley specimen after all.   Two years ago it was quite late in their flight season, today however I hoped to be there at the beginning of the season. Looking on-line I had only seen a couple of sightings posted. 

As luck would have it when I arrived it was spotting with rain and quite cool, certainly different to the last few weeks of hot dry sunshine. But that lack of rain shows on the ground as everything here was baked hard, cracks you can get fingers down in the thin soil, and more worrying many of the ants' nests that are crucial to the survival of the large blue looked like they'd been broken open and robbed by presumably badger, green woodpecker, or maybe even foxes. There were intact ants' mounds around but a quick scan revealed at least half of the mounds were broken apart or damaged. One even had a fresh badger tunnel dug into it.

It was noticeable on first walking onto the reserve that it looked like it had gone back a little since my last visit, with quite a noticeable increase in scrub. The once prominent signs directing people to the site have gone too, did they attract too many visitors? When the large blue were first introduced here the site was kept secret. The then recently installed horse gallops half way up the hill have also been abandoned by the looks of it which is a good thing I'd suggest, as what was mown turf and artificial gallop material on my last visit is now quite overgrown. Not good for the large blue, but reverting to wild for more generalist species, like this small heath, which intrigued me. It was stationed on some sheep's fleece for ages. I'm assuming the fleece lanolin is providing minerals of some form, but I can't recall seeing butterflies on fleece before - I've probably not looked to be honest.

The main path pushing further into the ancient downland area is now overgrown meaning I had to divert downhill a little where I spied a very familiar object. Either this is for a training day or a transect is about to happen.

Having pushed through the scrub, snagging myself a few times on the dog roses now growing everywhere, my first large butterfly of the day was one or two  meadow brown, which proved frustratingly hard to get a decent image of.

It was while trying to snap a better image of the meadow brown that a blue butterfly flew past at speed at knee height, a common blue by the lighter colour of it, large blue do look sooty blue on the wing. It was gone before I really registered it, with just my mental filing system dismissing large blue. Spots of rain were still falling and while those species I was now seeing were proving fascinating I did wonder if I'd come too early, on a day with the wrong weather, to see my target species. 

Planning to walk on a little along this forty degree slope, I looked down to check my footing and there, right next to my shoe, a large blue.

I only had time for a very quick record photograph before this beauty rose and flew off to join what I think were three maybe four large blue quartering the exact same place I 'd seen them two years ago. I now had got my eye in. The cooler conditions were making them less mobile than I feared they may be which allowed for a number of close encounters, (though not too close for this protected species). 

        

To be honest it was near impossible to know how many were in front of me. Definitely four, but I'd struggle to say more in this first area as they were being both very mobile and quite sedentary once they settled. Those resting on thyme with wings open were really easy to spot, that dark Wedgewood blue really does punch out from the short downland vegetation.

Once I'd fired off a dozen or so images I relaxed and just watched them going about their business without me looking through the viewfinder. This is the closest I've been to newly emerged large blue and I can appreciate, though don't condone, why Victorian naturalists craved this species for their collections. Newly emerged as these were they are absolutely stunning, a thing of beauty.

This female is egg laying on thyme

Within half an hour I'd seen more large blue butterflies than in my entire lifetime. As I sat for a while just taking this all in I began to wonder how these now-naturalised 20-30th generation differ from Swedish stock they originated from. Maybe they don't. 

However insect evolution can be rapid due to quick birth-develop-adult-breed-die generations. Yes these blues in Somerset are not from a British stock, but they are the same species as the ones brought over from Scandinavia, yet have these now English emerging adults begun to adapt at all, adapting to survive on a dry south facing slope in Somerset? Is the interaction with the ants identical? It's a thought.

I'd read this week that although large blue colonies are faring well across the UK, this site having previously been the best place in Britain in terms of large blue abundance, has suffered a little. Although there is still a healthy population here, a succession of less favourable winters, wet and cold springs and prolonged periods of drought have reduced numbers significantly. Though, as someone who studied statistical analysis in conservation for my degree all those years ago I ask myself is any of this change statistically significant? 

Is it a worry given what I saw today of the desiccated and smashed ant-hills and the concrete hard baked soil? The number of butterflies on the wing today was good, I found more on my way back in another area, counting five at least, three spiralling on the wing. But without some much needed rain, will the ants, the host flowers and the area itself be productive enough to sustain this fragile butterfly at the north-western edge of it's range? I'll leave that question hanging there while I revisit this image of a remarkable and stunning species brought back from extinction.

The Fox, The Cat, and The Crow

The image accompanying this short post has absolutely nothing to do with what follows, however I observed this earlier in the year at Wells Cathedral and it made me smile.

More recently for the last few nights the carrion crows in the area have been kicking up one heck of a din around and after midnight. Nights of course are short in June but this raucous harsh cawwing has pierced the silence of the darkness and has continued regularly for the last week or so. I first heard this commotion about 11.30pm one night as I stood in the garden before bed. Alerted to the noise I could see the carrion crows flying about silhouetted against the still feint blue sky to the west, but that was all. No other sound aside from their caw-caw-caw. On another occasion there was an almighty din coming from the field at the rear of the house at around 1 am. In that instance two maybe three crows were being very vocal and moving about quickly. I suspected there was a nocturnal predator about but couldn't see anything or be certain. 

But now I think I have solved the mystery - a fox. 

We have a lot of foxes around there, making best use of the mixed habitat of the very rural landscape all the way to the sea and the very built up suburbia with scavenging opportunities. Each of these two habitats is separated by the lane which runs behind our house to the village itself. On Friday night, or should I say at 2am on Saturday, our cat who is a fully trained mafia boss woke me up for a feed.  Duly fed he popped outside to sit on the drive, something he regularly does after a handsome meal. Moments later there was an explosion of caw-caw-caw from the trees behind me. The calling drew closer accompanied by wingbeats and then across the street a fox casually lolloped along the front gardens of the houses opposite, being followed, well below roof height, by a pair of crows becoming more agitated by the minute. Eventually the fox leapt up over a fence and went behind another house, closely followed by the noisy sentinels. After what seemed an age but was more likely only a minute the noise of the crows faded then died away, silence resumed. 

Gingernut our cat sat on the drive watching this unfold with resigned bemusement. He is a marvellous cat as he has absolutely no interest in birds and simply observes them even if he and they are on the lawn together. The resident hedgehog likewise gets a wide birth. I put it down to intelligence on his part after I educated him to not kill wildlife. Mrs Wessex-Reiver says he's conserving his energy as it is beneath him to react as it would be far too much effort to chase after a prey item. She may be right.

The question then on my lips is are the crows and fox interacting because of disturbance? Or, more likely, are young fledgling crows about that I can't see and the adults are simply being good parents? From what I saw of the fox it was patrolling the gardens not trying to get at something intently like a stricken bird on the ground. I can't be 100% certain every carrion crow cawing at night has been due to the fox as in the behaviour I witnessed, but it makes reasonable sense as foxes are a nightly occurrence, though of course rats or other cats may be to the creator of this darkest hour pandemonium on other occasions.

It is not the first time Gingernut our cat and the local foxes have been together. I suspect there is some interaction of sorts going on as he leads a very much nocturnal life. A month or so back I was woken by the foxes trashing a neighbours recycling boxes. Leaning out the bedroom window there were two foxes who seeing me fled down the street. Moments later Gingernut appeared from the exact same area as the recycling boxes and foxes and nonchalantly trotted over the road and into the house with an air of "nothing to see here". Was he across there with the foxes all three trashing the recycling boxes, or was he simply innocently passing? I have my suspicions he was with them and interacting to a greater or lesser degree with them as I've seen him twice now watching a fox intently on our drive, well before I have. 

Non peer-reviewed research suggests foxes and cats do interact and by and large there is no combative competition. Foxes being bigger could of course kill a cat, but cats are mean street fighters and observational research suggests foxes avoid cats due to the latter's claws and lightning fast reflexes. Even Gingernut who we think is about twelve or 13 years old can show remarkable ferocity when the neighbourhood cats enter the garden, though with the street domiciled fox, he just watches the fox trot by, which is why I have my suspicions he is a feline co-ordinator of this mayhem, like a ginger Godfather.

Now - I just need a good, unbroken, night of sleep......

Further reading  : 

Are foxes a threat to cats (2014)

http://www.catbehaviourist.com/blog/study-certified-cat-behaviourist-anita-kelsey/