Nightjars on the Commons

Last night Martin and I shared a Sussex Common with several Nightjars and a horde of voracious midges. It is quite enthralling, waiting for the sun to go down and to hear the first churring. Unfortunately last night we also had a helicopter fly by, a barking dog and in the distance an outdoor concert  with the obligatory bass thump. Never mind, at around 2145 the first faint sounds were heard. Soon a closer bird flew by and perched for us and then commenced a fairly loud churring session - wonderful!

The photographs were taken in near darkness - for the photographers - Canon 7d Mkii coupled with a Canon 300mm F2.8 and 1.4 extender - hand held. The remarkable thing is that I managed to get any sort of recognisable shot as I had the camera set to ISO 10000 and a shutter speed of 1/30 of a second.

Taken at 21:56!

Being so close afforded the opportunity to record the churring, flight calls and wing clapping that are characteristic of the bird.

Sonogram of the first recording, sorry the blog doesn't run to synchronised sound and vision.

Press play for the audio track

For the Geeks. Olympus LS11 with Sennheiser Me66/K6. Post processing in Audacity. Sonograms in Raven Lite.

This is a second recording of the same bird, this time with a high pass filter applied at 320 Hz, helping to remove some of the ever present aircraft noise. The swatting sounds remain, I am afraid the midges were getting through my defences.