Not quite a Common Nighthawk 9th October 2024

Mark had decided to have a lazy morning today so I went off alone in the car in search of a Greenland White fronted Goose that had been reported further south at Sandwick. We agreed that if anything of major interest was reported I would return immediately to the house

I was only half way to Sandwick when my phone pinged with a message from the Shetland Rare Bird Group.The news it conveyed was pretty sensational. A Common Nighthawk had been discovered on Yell. 

The message read 

COMMON NIGHTHAWK flushed from the side of the road at Crossroads,Burravoe,Yell.

Seen very well in flight, but not relocated yet

I turned the car round immediately and headed back to Scalloway as quickly as possible

My phone rang again

It was Mark

There's a nighthawk on Yell

I know I am on my way and will be at the house in fifteen minutes.Book us onto the next available ferry to Yell 

Common Nighthawk would be a first for Shetland and immensely popular. It is the North American version of our European Nightjar and very rare in Britain with only 27 records to date, two of which are from Scotland - in Argyll and Orkney.

Both Mark and myself saw the one last year that spent an unforgettable day asleep on a fence in Wantage Oxfordshire no more than thirty minutes from my home so this one on Yell would not be a British tick for either of us but still a very good bird to see.

Mark was waiting at the gate when I got back and took over the driving to the ferry terminal at Toft.It was just as well we did book the ferry as arriving at Toft there was a long line of cars, birders cars, in both the booked and unbooked lanes.We duly took our place in the booked lane and when the time came to board, unusually the man checking us on board had a list of car registrations to ensure the booked cars got priority. I have only seen them do this once before on a ferry to Fetlar when we were all going to try and see a Rufous tailed Robin - we failedof course but that's another story

Once off the ferry we drove in a convoy of cars heading for Burravoe. The parking situation would be interesting as it is not a big place and parking opportunities are limited.A request had aleady been put out to not park in the school's small car park which lies next to the crossroads

Burravoe incidentally is where we twitched a Tennessee Warbler see here and we passed the very house and sycamore tree it was in as we searched for a place to leave the car

We were forced to park quite a distance from the crossroads where we had seen many birders milling around and not doing much. 

I assumed the nighthawk had yet to be re-located and everyone was waiting to see if it would eventually be re-found. It was only when walking back up the road to the crossroads that I learnt the supposed Common Nighthawk had been re-found and re-identified as a European Nightjar and was currently tucked snuggly in a sheltered corner behind a drystone wall almost at the crossroads

So obviously the 'nighthawk' was not seen as well as the original observer thought. We all have made misidentifications but probably not quite as spectacular as this one and resulting in a large number of birders coming to Yell.

Making the best of it I leant over the drystone wall and took my turn in taking point blank photos of the sleeping Nightjar, totally unfussed by all the interest it was causing. 

Its marbled colouring of dark and grey perfectly matched the drystone wall it was roosting under and to my mind this individual's plumage looked greyer in tone than those of its kind I have seen in southern England

Personally I did not feel that disappointed at failing to see a Common Nighthawk as it is not every day you get to be within metres of a roosting Nightjar. Having seen a Common Nighthawk in Britain last year I was relaxed about the situation but others who had never seen one were not so charitable. 

I clambered over the wall and walked around a field to join others taking photos from another angle but there is only so much you can achieve with a bird that does not move, not even opening its eyes.

We left it in its unlikely roosting place and to take its chances at dusk.