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Nightjar

Last updated: 08 February 2011

In this clip from Iolo's Welsh Safari, Iolo helps rig up a nightjar trap in Crychan in Powys and reviews video footage of the birds in their natural habitat.

Nightjar are incredibly hard to spot with near perfect camouflage and will happily sit, motionless on the forest floor for hours on end. Should a predator approach the birds shrink even lower into the ground.

Good places to spot nightjars in Wales are Nercwys and Hiraethog Forest in Denbighshire, Glasfynydd and the Brecon Beacons National Park Forests in Merthyr Tydfil, Crychan, Dyfnant and Talybont in Powys and Afan Forest Park in Neath - Port Talbot.

Nightjars are migratory birds which arrive in Wales in mid-May where they can raise two broods of two chicks before heading back to Africa in August or September.

They are so inactive during the day that with their grey-brown plumage, they blend into the bark and twigs that surround them on the forest floor.

The fact that they are only active for a short time at dawn and dusk when they feast on insects - a diet consisting mostly of moths - has made radio-tracking of these birds invaluable.

With recent changes in forestry management they have a new preference. In 2004 a survey revealed that 80% of nightjars in Wales had nested in areas of clear fell forestry (where the trees have been removed), with only 15% nesting on their 'traditional' habitat.

Clear-felled areas are forests where newly-planted trees are still small which make ideal habitat for nightjars. More than 50% of Britain's population now nest in woods where mature trees have been cut down and young trees planted.

Numbers had declined in Wales through the loss of suitable natural nesting conditions. However, the practice of clear felling has created ideal conditions for nightjars to thrive and enabled a resurgence in the population.

Their numbers doubled from 1982 and 1992, and since then have increased by almost 25%, bringing the Welsh singing ('churring') male population to 269.


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