A truly excellent and memorable evening’s birding was had by me, Mark Murphy and Tony in the Gwydir Forest at sunset yesterday.
The undoubted stars were a hat-trick of Nightjars, but the supporting cast made up of a trio of Cuckoos and Tree Pipits, plus a pair of Redstarts was hardly bad.
None of the birds were shy either, with a pair of Cuckoos particularly keen to strut their stuff showing at one point down to about thirty yards.
The Nightjars were hardly backward in coming forward with three birds heard churring around a quarter to ten and thereafter in flight intermittently for the next forty five minutes with one male flying very close indeed.
The white handkerchief trick was employed on a few occasions, but this seemed to make little difference and was perhaps more a sign of surrender to the armies of midges and mossies more than anything else!
Until later.
A cracking evening indeed, I was particularly impressed with seeing the Nightjar patternation at such close range...
ReplyDeleteMark
Paul,
ReplyDeleteyou are really lucky. I've never seen one despite my best efforts! I was in scotland again recently though and saw 4 cuckoos in different places, also Black guillemot, WT Eagle, loads of Bonxies, arctic skua, BT and RT divers but no crested tits or capercaillie :(
Good holiday though.
cheers, Rob