10/08/2018
Golden Nightjar was recorded for the first
time in the Western Palearctic (WP) region as recently as May 2015, when a male was unfortunately hit by a car and killed along
the road to Aoussard, Western Sahara.
At first
it was assumed that this might be a vagrant, although in March 2016 an unusual,
repetitive call was heard at night by German birders at Oued Jenna, along the
Aoussard road, not far from where the 2015 record had been made. It was
initially thought possibly to be a Red-necked
Nightjar, but this was subsequently dispelled on their return home,
the call clearly identified as belonging to Golden Nightjar. Just days
later, BiOME researchers found three territorial male Golden Nightjars in
the same area.
It has
subsequently become established that the species is evidently regular, if not
resident in the right habitat in Western Sahara, with multiple birds observed
between February and May each year, and at multiple sites some distance from
each other. Furthermore, in April 2016, Eric Didner visited northern Mauritania
and found at least one male in the large wadi north-east of Ouadâne,
just north of the 21°N line that defines the southern boundary of the WP (as
defined by The Birds of the Western Palearctic), with birds observed again
there in April 2017.
Although
the continued presence of the species at multiple sites across Western Sahara and
northern Mauritania strongly suggests that it is breeding, reproduction had not
been confirmed until this spring, when a team of five birders, including
myself, chanced upon a nest just a few hundred metres north of the 21°N border
near Ouadâne, Mauritania.
At dusk
on 18 April, during a concerted effort to locate Golden Nightjars, Dan Pointon
picked up a male giving snippets of song around 200 m to the south of our camp.
With the five members of the team widely scattered in the wadi, it took the
best part of 30 minutes for us all to reconvene at the spot. Although the bird
didn't sing again, scanning with torches eventually picked up eyeshine and we
went on to enjoy crippling views of the nightjar actively hunting crickets to
within 10 m of where we were stood. Curiously, it would sit on the floor,
scanning for food items, before jumping and fluttering up to a metre or more in
the air to catch its prey.
Continued
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