I heard the calls of the Indian Nightjar about 15 days ago at a spot about 5-10 minutes away from my hostel block. Ever since, I have been trying to find one of them on the ground (relying on luck, light, playback) but have failed to return back with anything but sightings of a few (flushed, mostly) Nightjars in their moth-like flights and umpteen recordings of the chuk-chuk-chuk-churrrr calls.
The calls (usually 1-2 birds) start from between 6:57-7:06 PM (never earlier, nor later) and around 15-20 minutes later upto 6 of them may call simultaneously. I reckon that there are around 8-10 birds (which is a lot less than my earlier estimate of c15) in the small area.
Last evening, I marked out 2 spots, from where the calls nearly always start, which are easy to reach when the sun is not out (the terrain is not without risk for the casual walker and a slip might have bad consequences, especially since I do not have a decent flashlight). To follow up, I went to the two places at 5:30 AM today morning, but failed to spot or hear anything. In fact, I'm not sure if the nightjars are active at that time in the first place (would anybody enlighten me?).
However, I went to check again at 6:30 PM today and was lucky straightaway. The first of the spots had a surprisingly small (their wings are so long, that the bird's size now seems strangely disproportionate) rock like creature excellently camouflaged with the ground. So much so, I think I might have been seeing the bird all along but have just never spotted it.
This individual allowed me really close and eventually flew off at about 7 PM (and straight after, started calling from wherever it landed). I tried not to use the flash, but eventually had to do so for the last 5 minutes or so. I should have gotten better images, but my camera is pretty lousy beyond ISO200 and I still know very little, if anything, about photography and settings as such.
The joy of finding your own nightjar, by the way, is unparalleled :-)
Location: Manipal, Karnataka, India
Date: 15th May 2010
This image was taken with the flash on.
Cheers!
Ramit Singal
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