Nightjar - I don't know if I should have heard them as yet...

A midweek evening jaunt recently saw me in search of Quail and Nightjar locally.  Having heard a dozen Quail in the last year I decided it was high time I laid eyes on one for the first time since 2022, and so, armed with knowledge of a singing male in Culcheth, which borders the western edge of Little Woolden Moss just over into the county of Cheshire, K and Lee and I spent a couple of hours hard listening.  The fields in the area are vast.  I have no real idea how hectares and acres work in terms of a measurement of size, but I think if I was driving across the area it would have taken me minutes, rather than seconds to cover it.  An hour in, and we hear one, distant, anaemic “whip-me-whop” from the furthest quarter of the field.  Determined not to trespass and out of respect for the hard-working farmers of the area, we find footpaths on the paths app and skirt miles out of our way to try and lay eyes on this tiny migrating game bird.  Two more calls and it feels like the Quail is moving further away.  A failure.  But at least I know they’re here, locally, and I can do some very early morning searching over the next two weeks.

Deciding to check in on various owl roosts and nest sites while we’re in the field, we moved away from Culcheth and were walking back from checking an (empty) nest where Long-eared Owls have nested before, when we heard the two-stroke motor sound of a calling Nightjar.  This is much earlier than last year when I first heard them on June 8th.  There is little in birding that is more exciting to me than this sound – in part because of how scarce Nightjar were when I first encountered them.

The first time I saw a Nightjar was at Allerthorpe Common in 1996.  I was 16, and had been involved in the Bolton YOC for five or so years.  All of my formative knowledge of birding, attitudes towards the environment, and fieldcraft was taught to me by a group of generous, funny, kind adults volunteering their time to help a younger generation.  Peter Young, Melanie Churcher, Lynne Musgrave and many others gave their time and knowledge, wisdom and experience to help a group of callow youths encounter wildlife that our parents did not have the time, knowledge or capacity to show us.  I am more grateful to these people than I can explain, and it is a direct result of their generosity that I (and probably dozens of others) are still dedicated to birding and the wild world.

In the summer of 1996 we drove to Allerthorpe from Bolton, and walked a couple of miles in the evening sunlight before magically, around 9.30pm, the churring began and we saw two Nightjar – a male and a female – pass us in their gliding, moth-like flight.  There are some moments, I have come to understand, when you can feel the memory being made.  You are aware that you will not forget this experience, and you know that no matter how adept you become with words, you cannot properly evoke the whole later.  The low light after such an auric evening of sun; the gasps of your friends - callow though we were, still touched by the ephemera of Nightjar flight; the muffled sounds of a night time forest on open heath; the strongly herbal scent of transpiration in the evening heat.  A memory that comes to life under consideration of it.  The hushed reverence of the excited whispers to each other, asking if we had each seen and heard the wing claps, the white flashes on the wings. 

For years, the only way to see Nightjar was by driving across two counties, to seek these special birds in their eastern and southern heathland habitats.  Now, as we come down in time to the 2020s, and Nightjar breed in at least two locations in Manchester.  Now, they may have always bred here, and the locations of these birds is still kept quiet for good reason, but I certainly had no idea they were present.  A chance encounter on another Quail search in 2022 made me aware of Nightjar as a bird that might occur on passage when I heard them completely by chance ("...a cluster of Nightjars sang some songs out of tune..."), but to secure evidence of successful breeding over the last three summers was more than I would ever have dreamed possible.  Knowing that at least four chicks fledged last year, no more than 5 miles from where I live, is excitement that evokes the feeling of that night in 1996.  The memory of that wonderful experience is awoken and I even catch the ghost of the herbal scent from the air.

As this early male and female Nightjar from this week floated in front of us, no more than ten metres away, and landed on the dry earth no more than 50 metres out from our vantage, I decided that I will spend more time with them this summer, keeping an eye on them and the success of their nesting attempt. I hope to hear their song all summer, so clear in my ear like it was today.

PS, Nightjars always remind me of a really sweet song by Elton John and written with Bernie Taupin... did you find all the references?