Nightjaaaaaar! 3/6/13

Some footage of a churring male Nightjar in NW Kent on Monday evening:

I've made several trips this week with this species in mind. It was fantastic to track this individual down at a site I've heard has been less productive in recent years. It took some patience to find the spot but on my second visit I'd worked it out and spent an hour watching and listening to one of our most unusual and elusive migrant birds.

At first there was just the sound, that unmistakeable loud chuurrring cutting though the trees, then...silence. But soon enough, from my position at the edge of a clearing of a commercial forestry site, a dark shape, bolted into a nearby tree and the sound resumed. It perched in the open for a while on a dead branch, sometimes swooping off to catch a moth or some other nocturnal insect with a rapid movement of long, pointed wings. Several times it flew off and began again elsewhere but it came back on its loop to its favoured branch in a blink a you'd miss it fashion.

Being largely crepuscular (I love that word), this bird occupies an odd fragment of the day, the hours as dusk descends and dawn breaks, often the hollow between. Like clockwork, each night this bird began churring at around 9.35pm and carried on until 10.10pm when it paused. I even tried the 'hankerchief' trick but only succeeded in cracking myself up. Those superb early views soon became silhouettes, which soon became just whirring noises in a still night.

It's not too often I find myself in the woods after dark, maybe I should do it more often. Here there was a chance to admire other secretive species too - a roding Woodcock squeaking overhead and bats along the woodland edge. Even little things grabbed my attention, like the trees creaking and a Robin's half-song that pierced it all.

A stirring experience and an amazing bird, one of the highlights of the year so far.

Active forestry work helps create Nightjar habitat like this: large clearings with a mix of young-growth scrub, bare areas and  mature trees

Pines at dusk

Nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus), Kent, June 2013

Tigers in Brockley!

Grrr...

Jersey Tiger Moth (Euplagia quadripunctaria)

Sorry, didn't mean to alarm anyone with the title of the post...there are no REAL tigers in Brockley, well not that I've ever come across. But I have spotted a good number of these little beauties recently - Jersey Tiger Moths! I found these in the allotment garden by the station last week, where they were flitting conspicuously among the flowers and weeds. I saw another one bolting across the road nearby, a hurried mess of black and creamy white wings, a reddish spark from its underwing.

Given their fairly large size and the fact that they fly by day (unlike most moths) they can easily be confused for butterflies at first, a Red Admiral maybe, but it's soon easy to tell them apart. They're generally not that fussy about where they land, or put off by a bit of attention; they will expose their bright red underwing and take flight if suitably disturbed though.

They're certainly becoming more common now and summers in South London can be marked by the first appearance of this species. When I first saw one of these land on my window sill in SE London two years ago, I was slightly confused when my little moth ID book suggested it had a range across much of Europe but only in the farthest reaches of South West England. Naturally I thought I'd scored a mothing mega (!) but that summer it was revealed that the moths were being seen in London for the first time (although 2005-6 looks more likely) and in unprecedented numbers. Warmer and therefore more hospitable conditions are no doubt the reason for this gradual shift northwards from their 'natural' range of the Channel Islands and Europe. We may not be so aware of subtle climatic changes like this but here's proof that things are happening. Jersey Tiger moths even made it to Kent last year.

Now's a good time to see these stunning moths, love it or hate it, Buddleia is a good bet. Maybe there's a tiger at the bottom of your garden?!