NIghtjar Survey, May 2014.

Not everyone in the world gets to do a survey for nightjars. Mostly because, most people have no clue what a nightjar is and why would perform a survey on something so seemingly benign as night jars.

The nightjars are an insect eating nocturnal bird. They roost in trees bordering fields and come out on those warm early summer nights to feed and call. You might know of one: whip-poor-will. The other species here in the east is the “chuck-wills-widow.” They sound a lot alike at first but once you get a few calling at the same time it becomes easier to tell the difference. If you can recognize

The nightjar business comes from their eating habit of keeping their mouths wide open like a jar to capture the bugs.

So far, I’ve never had to tell some shotgun-toting’-hound dog-loving stranger, at eleven o’clock at night, standing in some cemetery in the middle of the county, under a full moon, “We’ll sir, we’re surveying nightjars.”

We did one time, run into a group from the local paranormal organization who wondered if we’d noticed any paranormal activity so far that night. We didn’t quite know how to answer them.

One thing that has changed a bit it at some of the cemeteries, we notice the solar powered blue lights have been replace by solar power multicolored lights placed next to headstones.

This time around we counted fourteen whips and eight chucks. Not quite a record but close to it.
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