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COUNTRY NOTEBOOK: M. Krishnan : Watchful in the dark : The Sunday Statesman : 18 June 2017
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WATCHFUL IN THE DARK
( Nightjar)

"Thousand of miles of rural roads have been improved and macadamised in the last four years, even in the remote countryside. It is not for the benefit of pedestrians or animal-drawn vehicles that this has been done (both bullocks and men inside bullock-carts prefer something softer underfoot than tarred stone pressure-flattened), but only to provide a better surface for trucks and motor cars. With life getting more swift and mechanised, such improvements are inevitable, and undoubtedly it is a greater boon to have our roads properly surfaced.

However, for animals this is a deprivation. It is not only the lesser wild life that uses our roads and byroads at night. I remember two big leopards that were seen within minutes of each other, sauntering along the main bus-road at Chilkanahatti shortly after sunset: it is well known that both tigers and leopards will freely use earth-roads in the course of their wanderings, Civets too like to run along the roadside, and so do hares and field mice. However, the chief nocturnal users of our roads are undoubtedly Nightjars.

Their reddish-orange eyes, reflecting the headlamps of automobiles from the surface, are quite a feature of our roadways as anyone who has done some motoring by night will know. Recently I traversed seven miles of a newly-tarred jungle road in a jeep after dinner and saw no Nightjars on that stretch, which once used to be studded with their eyes after dark.

Why do these birds squat on the road all night? Having motored through the countryside at all hours, I can say that Nightjars are to be found on the road from dusk almost to dawn. Some other birds, particularly Bee-eaters like the finely powdered earth of our roads for dust baths, but obviously Nightjars are not indulging in a marathon all-night dust-bath --- they sit lightly on the roadway, without stirring the dust by rolling around, as dust-bathing birds do.

I think the reason for preferring roads to open fields and wasteland (Nightjars also frequent such places, especially stony and bare patches of scrub at the foot of hillocks) is that the flat surface cushioned with dust and with no vegetation to obscure a clear view or impede instant flight, gives them exceptional opportunities for hunting. Nightjars hunt moths and other night-flying insects on the wing, and their disproportionately large eyes enable them to see well in the dark. Squatting on the road, they can see a good way along it, and take off in hot pursuit without the risk of brushing their soft-pinioned wings against stiff or thorny twigs or leaves.

If this is the attraction of the roadway to Nightjars, why should they avoid tarred-roads? I am not sure of the answer to this question, but I do not think the hardness of the surface has anything to do with it --- Nightjars often sit on stones and boulders. It could be that the smell of the tar has something to do with it, not by keeping Nightjars away (birds, in general, have little apprehension of smell) but because smell repels insects --- but I confess even to me this seems a somewhat tenuous explanation. The fact remains that the birds prefer earth-roads to metalled highways.

I can provide a fairly accurate assessment of the speed of Nightjars coasting along a road just ahead of nocturnal motorcars. Several times I have noticed that when a car was doing about 20-25 mph, the Nightjar had no difficulty in keeping its distance, flying low, just in front of the bonnet, for 20 or 30 yards before turning sharply and dipping to settle on the roadside. When the speed is increased, the bird either veers sharply to one side to avoid the oncoming vehicle, or shoots up and flutters to let it pass below and then squats on the road once more, in the tracks of the car. Once I caught a Nightjar in my hand, motoring at night, as it flew just overhead --- I have also caught a goggle-eyed plover. Similarly I was surprised at the softness of its plumage and the richness of its pattering and the bird's lightness in the hand."

- M. Krishnan

This was published on 3 October 1965 in The Sunday Statesman

#the photograph of a Nightjar has not been reproduced here.