Nightjar

Nightjars are a summer visitor here and they make us wait. They’re usually one of the last migrants to arrive in late April and May, with most travelling up from the scrub grasslands of the Democratic Republic of Congo.  

They come here to breed on heathlands, moorlands, woodland clearings and in recently felled conifer plantations. They’re most numerous in southern England but are also found in parts of Wales, northern England and southwestern Scotland.  

By late August and September most Nightjars have left the UK, heading back over mountains, seas and desert to their Sub-Saharan wintering grounds.  

These almost mythical birds arrive from Africa every summer to raise their young. During the day their SAS standard camouflage makes them invisible to most. But as dusk descends, their unearthly sound shatters the silence across heathland and moor. 

Like a strange creature from a 70s B-movie. The male’s churring is more alien lifeform than a shy brown bird. It has a mechanical feel, like a strange clockwork toy steadily unwinding, the constant notes gently rising and falling through the half-light. They often move their head as they call, throwing their voice and making it difficult to locate exactly where they are. As if to make things even more eerie, the churring is often combined with a percussive flapping of the wings.  

Nightjars were once much more common and widespread than today. The loss of open woodland and heathland to agriculture and development caused numbers to dramatically fall by 51% across the UK between 1972 and 1992. But more recently numbers have begun to recover. This is partly because of successful conservation efforts to restore lowland heath but also the felling of commercial forests which has produced large areas of suitable open habitat. 

The Nightjar is known by many names – the Fern Owl, the Wheeler, the Nightchurr and the Dor-Hawk. But the oddest is surely the Goatsucker. Long ago it was thought Nightjars would drink milk directly from goats, poisoning them so their udders wasted away and they went blind. The myth was once common in many countries all over Europe, not just in the UK.  

The truth...is less dramatic. Nightjars were probably coming close to the livestock because they were hunting the many insects close by.