nightjars

It's been pretty wet and cool today but it improved by late afternoon. While returning from Montignac at about 9 in the evening, we stopped to try to find a red-legged partridge which had flown into the windscreen. We didn't find it but a scops owl was calling from a nearby tree. This was the first I had heard in Charente for a long time. The call is often compared to that of a midwife toad which is quite common here but in fact it is much louder.

A little later we took a drive to St Mary's forest to see/hear if any nightjars had returned. There were two sitting in the road, caught in our headlights and we heard two more churring close to the road from St Mary.