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Showing posts from June, 2010

Red-necked Nightjarring

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One evening, as our busy season is ending, no dinners to serve, no washing-up to do, so I slipped out just before dusk to walk ten minutes up the lane near the house. We can hear the Red-necked Nightjars calling from the house from mid-April, at dusk and at dawn and sometimes one will glide across the garden. But to get better views it is best to head for a quiet track between the olive groves, stopping at a point where one's view is reasonably unobstructed. There is something special about being out as night falls and the bats start appearing. As a boy, I would head to a local oak wood, stand at the edge and wait for the roding flight of the Woodcock, that extraordinarily cryptic wader that circles each territory at dusk uttering a series of grunts followed by a loud whip-crack of a call. Sometimes there would be the chance to go "nightjarring", which meant a drive to a forestry plantation to listen to the churring of European Nightjars and the occasional glimpse of this