No, not a pub crawl, sadly those days are long behind me, the hangover lasts 5 times longer than in my misspent youth!!😢😂 Instead a trip up to Ashdown Forest to see Nightjars or rather listen to Nightjars as in general by the time they come out to play, it's to dark to see em!!!
I arrived at Old Lodge, first visit since they've started charging for the car park😢 four quid!! Amazingly after years of not having signal in the area, suddenly the phones working fine!! Upgrade comes quick when there is money involved!!! As a member of the Sussex Wildlife Trust I'm hoping they are getting at least some of the money!!!
As expected was fairly quiet on the reserve, never see much at that time of day, few Willow Warblers and Chiffchaffs singing, couple of Chaffinch, a few Goldfinch, but couldn't find any of the local specialities, though I did hear a couple of Dartford Warbler, contact calls but couldn't get a view, think early morning would be the best time for the Redstarts, Woodlarks and Tree Pipits that frequent the reserve, still the scenery is lovely, though once again the two dogs at the house at the top corner, launched into vicious barking as I passed and the fence they are behind don't look very solid,😱😱 lets hope their bark is worse than their bite if they ever get out!!
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| A look over the reserve, light was a bit harsh |
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| A view of the South Downs in the background |
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| Quite a few Foxgloves about the place, always a favourite |
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| Beast!! There's always beast, was actually surprised to see them on the reserve at this time of year with all the ground nesting birds!! Got to be a risk of trampling!! |
With time moving on, I started to look for a good spot to make a stand for the Nightjars, At this point I bumped into another birder who said the slopes near the car park were a good spot, so I decided to join him, the habitat did indeed look good and the other advantage would be afterwards it would be a short 200 meter walk back to the car, whereas from the other spot I liked the look of it would be about 3/4 of a mile blundering about in the dark, with my sense of direction who knows where I could end up!!!😁
So we waited, at 9.23pm we had our first brief burst of Nightjar song!! Very early! Still light!! Would we get to see em?!!! (dramatic music here!!) Obviously not😂😢!! I always think Nightjars start singing about 30 minutes after you expect them to!! So it proved with no more "Churring" until it was nearly dark!! On the plus side we were treated to an epic Sunset!! A few pics below!
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| A nice crescent moon as well! |
At this point a Woodcock flew over calling, obviously in the near dark the pics are pants, I'm gonna blame the camera!!😢😂
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| Woodcock!! At least you can tell what it is!!! Come on it came bombing out of nowhere!! |
Just after the Woodcock disappeared a Nightjar started up and it was really close!! They are always magical to hear, even over the constant Airplane noise and the Cars going along the road!! The disadvantage of being near the Carpark!!!
Margie had decided not to come, so I gave her a WhatsApp call to share the moment, though sadly despite the fact they were loud as I've ever heard them, she sadly couldn't hear them 😢😢
Was quite a good a display, with lots of Churring, a bit of wing clapping, though they didn't fly much while I was there, presume it's a bit late for display flights, there seemed to be a lot of good size moths about so hopefully they are getting plenty of food!
In the end I had brief flight views a couple of times, but couldn't find one perched up😢 Shout out here to my Zeiss Conquest Binoculars, I'm always surprised how good they are in low light conditions, even when I could see nothing with the naked eye they still gave reasonable views!!!
Some shonky videos below, done on my phone, strangely sound much louder on my phone than they do on the Laptop!!
Keep your eyes peeled you can just make one out in this video
Just the Churring on this one
So as said pretty Shonky and they don't really capture the magic of the experience, if you've never been I highly recommend it though maybe choose somewhere with less traffic and plane noise!!😏 Ashdown is pretty good for them and the Heaths of Sussex and Surry are also good spots, probably got a month or so left to hear them!!!
Nightjars are an interesting species, inspiring poets and with many myths and legends surrounding them, not that surprising because of their nocturnal habits. In the olden days were known as Goat Suckers as people believed they stole the milk from goats!!
More info on the Wiki page at the link!!
Not all soft and cuddly though as proven on BBC Springwatch!! They had a camera on a nest and it showed the mother eating it's chick alive!!! Not really known why it would do that but theories include that they sense when something is wrong with the chick, either illness or genetic defect and rather than waste effort feeding a chick that won't survive they kill it and rather than waste the protein eat it!! Or maybe they weren't catching enough food to feed two chicks so reduced the number to give the survivor the best chance, nature can be brutal!!!
The episode is on the link below the action is right at the start!! Not for the faint-hearted according to The Sun viewers were vomiting, though it really isn't that bad!!!!
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