At least four Golden Nightjars were located near the Aousserd road by the BIOME team (Dan Brown, Richard Moores and Martyn Owen) on 16 March 2016. Two birds were heard singing and one male had responded to song playback. This represents the first possible breeding of the species in the Western Palearctic.
In early March, a German birding group with Mohamed Lamine Samlali heard an unidentified nightjar. And on 28 March, M. L. Samlali recorded the bird (hear below the sound of what the team named “presumed Golden Nightjar”, and see its analysis in Drissner et al. 2016).
On 19 and 20 April, Peter Stronach and Bob Swann located 4 signing Golden Nightjars also at Oued Jenna.
On 20 April, a Golden Nightjar road killed at Oued Jenna was found by a Dutch birding group (Jurrien van Deijk, Ruben Vermeer, Daan Drukker and Jacob Lotz).
The next day, the Dutch birders photographed a Golden Nightjar and sound recorded another bird (2 birds in total, photos below).
Golden Nightjar songs
Below are the song recordings mentioned above (plus those added after):
- Bird 1 by Mohamed Lamine Samlali (see: Drissner, K., Martin, R. & Samlali, M.L. 2016. The song of Golden Nightjar at Oued Jenna. Go-South Bulletin 13: 72-74).
- Bird 2 by Daan Drukker.
- Bird 2 by Jacob Lotz.
- Two songs of the same bird by Bart van Hoogstraten (12 Feb. 2017)
- Another recording by the ‘Big Year WP’ team (13 Feb. 2017).
Updates:
- Feather samples from the road-killed Golden Nightjar cited above were used to study the taxonomic affinity of the species (Lawrie et al. 2017). A photograph showing a large vascularised brood patch, which is indicating local breeding, was also published in this paper.
Super !