There are 3 new posts today. This one is about 2 nightjars I saw last night!

OH WOWEEEE! WOW!!!

Cait, with whom I'm staying, as I do part of every year, lives in the Rocky Mountains. Last year she was walking up her substantial dirt driveway, off of the long dirt road she lives on, deep in the forest of the Rockies at 9,000 ft. and, being extremely observant (she would have made a great biologist, but then the world would have been deprived of some of the best Irish fiddling I've ever heard - and that's almost all I listen to anymore), and she noticed something "different" about a chunk of earth on the forest floor. She edged closer and saw her first nightjar - a common (but rarely seen) nighthawk. She could hardly believe her eyes, because are they WEIRD looking! They're so weird looking because they have nearly perfect camouflage.

They are sort of like the "missing link" that isn't missing, between owls and hawks. Some even seem to have a bit of a partial facial disk (to me, at least). A lot of people have never even HEARD of nightjars! They are the Poor-wills and nighthawks. They apparently either nest on the ground or just hang out there. They squint their eyes so that there is even better camo, because you see this long line due to their markings, rather than the round eye that they have. She thought this bird looked so strange it was as if he was from some other dimension, like "of the faerie" (remember, we ARE Irish after all. lol).

She was also surprised at how close he let her get to him. I think the nightjar knew he was so well camouflaged that he must have figured it was better to sit still than to flush. Then she saw him the next night in the same place, and he was a consistent visitor all summer. (I say him because I refuse to refer to an animal as an "it", and we have no gender neutral word for a being; isn't that strange that we don't?).

When first I got here, we didn't see a single insect. There had been a 2 foot snowfall the week before and the aspens weren't even starting to show leaves yet. Within a week it heated up and we started to see huge moths and Cait said, "AH, our nightjars will be back, now that there are so many moths." (see? She would have been a great biologist. So she's a great naturalist instead. We can't make EVERYTHING into a profession, right?). And sure enough, the very next day, the aspens burst forth in tiny leaves, and last night we saw not one, but TWO nightjars!

And they appeared to be hunting moths, with an irregular sort of flight pattern.

I'm willing to bet that a lot of poeple, seeeing a nightjar flitting around at night, think they are seeing large bats. But there really is such a thing as a nighthawk!

Now THAT I would like to see - a webcam on a nighthawk nest.

I don't know that much about them, other than the fact that Barn Owls are closely related to them, more so than other owls are, but I do know it's a huge privilege to even see one in the wild! It made my week/month for sure!

We've also seen a herd of elk, several small herds of deer, bunnies mating, playing, leaping, cavorting, and the black squirrel w/ the ear tufts (I forget the name) that lives in this vicinity, as well as chipmonks and ground squirrels. stellar jays, magpies, little yellow chickadees, a gray fox, and tracks of a lynx or mountain lion.

We were walking on the road when we heard a long, deep, extended growl from just out of view right beside us on the road. We talked loud and walked calmly back to the house, not to linger. There are a lot of mountain lions around here, as well as some lynx and bobcats. (and black bears). There was a bobcat lounging on Cait's pack porch next to the glass kitchen door one morning. And Wendy, who lives further north, chased a Canadian lynx off of her porch one morning! Wendy lost her entire herd of goats to a rogue mountain lion a few years back, which is what led her to develop the Colorado Mountain Dog, of which I have one... www.coloradomountaindogs.com

These dogs have a specific purpose and so she lets her dogs have one litter per year, and they're all spoken for before they're even conceived, because ranchers use them instead of poisons and traps to deter predators from killing their livestock. It works, and has for many centuries, since these dogs' main instinct is to protect the animals they live with.

I have one because I needed a dog who would be gentle and protective of my vulnerable hamsters and not try to hunt them like a terrier or herd them like a herding dog, etc. AND I have hopes of doing another owl immersion study if there is an unreleasable barn owl who needs a home and I can get the proper permits, etc. Anyway, my mountain dog is the only one not living on a ranch or among livestock. They're not high energy dogs in the sense that they're perfectly happy to lie around among their animal friends - and they must have animal friends. My dog loves to play w/ her brother for hours on end, though. She's staying w/ her brother right now, in fact.

ANYWAY, we've seen tons of wildlife just this week. Oh, and we have the joy of watching a Blue Heron rookery across a small lake where we can also see muskrats busily making their beaver-like homes in the newly melted water. So, yes, we saw the nesting Blue Herons, too.

It seems like we're in the middle of Africa or something, except the species of animals are different of course, and the trees and other fauna are different. But it seems just as adventurous in its own way.

One day Cait and I walked around the house from the back and there was a big ol' black bear standing next to the car. He ambled away with his substantial bottom bobbing from side to side. It was comical, since he was going AWAY from us and not attacking us. Lol. Our neighbor came home one night, got out of her car and started walking toward the house, only to realize that she was in between two black bears who were having a fight! Not exactly in between, but uncomfortably in the way, shall we say. These bears were so intent on their disagreement, though, that they ignored her, and eventually one chased the other into the forest and she chose that moment to run to the house and lock herself in.

It's a real adventure just living here! I love it here, needless to say! It feels like home to me.

I have yet to see a mountain lion here, other than just the tracks, but according to Jeff Guidry, who raised a captive, unreleasable mountain lion at Sarvey Wildlife Center, he could walk into her enclosure and NOT be able to see her for the life of him. He describes looking at the ground by his feet, and seeing the pebbles and dirt, and slowly the mountain lion began to appear to him. They are THAT good at hiding in plain site. No wonder the Native Americans thought they could shape shift! They have the most awesome ability to see you while you can't see them!

So if you do see them, it's usually when you're driving and they cross the road in front of you. (or you're backpacking alone in the hip deep snow, far, far back in the Sierras, long before the roads to the trails are even open, because you are young and adventurous and an experienced backpacker, but still, you have that innate stupidity that makes young people do things like this....and a mountain lion decides to track you for 3 days and you don't sleep for that entire time, unless you happen to accidentally doze off. When you get back to "civilization", by which you mean your car and then a remote mountain cabin, THEN you feel the fear. "You" meaning ME when I was in my 20s. sigh.).

We drive slowly on these mountain roads for the sake of the animals. None of this racing up a mountain road like you see in commercials! Hello, there could be someone standing on the other side of the curve! (not in the commercials, though, because those are shot on a closed track - but I think those commercials encourage people to cut loose on mountain roads - the evidence of this can be seen on our mountain road - or more accurately, several hundred feet below our road, where lie the remains of many a fatal accident in the form of the wrecked cars. Cait and Richard just lost a friend who "went over" (not his fault - he had a heart attack while driving). Sorry for rambling!

See, if this were a book, I'd have to go and cut out all the rambling! But this is a blog, so ramble I do!

Anyway, if you're a birder, you know how thrilling it is to see a night hawk hunting!

Also, Barn Owls are closely related to nighthawks. They are kind of somewhere between night hawks and the other, strigidae, owls. Barn Owls are their own special kind of owl all to themselves. That makes them even more precious and interesting to me.

-Stacey