Mysterious bird

Tricked because whatever is responsible for the din seems to be all around you but never in a position that can be seen — and tricked because if you are lucky enough to catch a glimpse, the bird looks more like a giant toy moth rather than a creature responsible for so much myth and legend.

Most people’s first encounter with a nightjar, our most mysterious bird, leaves them more than a little perplexed and often uttering: “What the hell is that?”

The bird’s appearance does little to dispel its sense of intrigue. It only comes out at night, has huge goggle eyes and a mouth hidden behind bristles.

To make matters worse the nightjar has a bizarre habit of clapping its wings together, very much in the manner of a performing seal. And, if you do happen to glance in the bird’s direction, you may still completely fail to see it, for when resting the nightjar looks like a small, very beautiful, yet totally inanimate log.

Birders will describe its plumage as “cryptic” but this is just a fancy way of saying it’s ridiculously hard to see.

However, this is not a tale of woe at the nightjar’s infuriating character but rather a celebration that this summer visitor has, with the help of conservationists, quietly and without much fuss, enjoyed a resurgence in its population, which for a long time seemed to be on the brink.

For the nightjar is something of a conservation success story. Numbers have quadrupled in the last 40 or so years, to such an extent that they can now be reliably heard at a number of UK locations on summer evenings. The bird makes its home in our wild, evocative landscapes — our moorlands and heaths. And while many of these sites have been destroyed, those that remain are now rightly afforded protection.

The nightjar has also benefited from the planting of conifer forests — usually the bane of conservationists. When areas of these trees are felled they provide the perfect habitat for nightjars to nest and find food.

But let us go back to that song. The bewitching, jarring notes are usually delivered for a spell of about five minutes as the male sits perched on a branch.

The song subtly changes in pitch and tone — the direction seeming to switch depending on which way the bird is pointing its head. The sense of confusion this causes befuddled even our greatest nature poet.

In his poem, The Fern Owl’s Nest, John Clare sums up a woodman’s confusion as he walks home across the heath and is unable to work out where the bird is singing from: “The fern owl’s cry that whews aloft, In circling whirls and often by his head, Wizzes as quick as thought and ill at rest.”

The bird lends itself well to those with vivid imaginations. One vernacular name for the nightjar is goatsucker.

The ancient Greeks sowed the myth that the bird had the alarming habit of entering goat stalls and suckling the animals which would in turn cause them to go blind!

This sense of unease continued well into the 18th century. Our first great naturalist Gilbert White writes about country folk’s belief that the bird could pass diseases on to cattle. But in reality, this visitor from Africa only poses a risk to the moths that it stalks and scoops up with that huge, bristled gape.

The nightjar is still very sensitive to habitat loss and the use of pesticides killing the moths on which it depends.

The RSPB’s Nick Phillips believes we must give the bird more help to stop it slipping back into decline.

He explained: “The increase in population is probably due to improved efforts to conserve and restore their traditional heathland habitats along with an increase in open areas within conifer plantations.

“However, further efforts to recreate and maintain their preferred habitats are needed to prevent this trend slipping back to the declines of the recent past.”

“Although the last national survey showed nightjars were increasing nationally, there have been declines in parts of their range, including North Wales and Scotland.”

An invitation to spend the night listening to a goatsucker doesn’t, on the face of it, sound particularly appealing, but the opportunity to listen to one of the countryside’s most memorable sounds is a chance that shouldn’t be missed.