Date: 26. December 1999, 10pm
Observers: Robert Wynands, Ulrike Bischler (both birding tourists), Asheesh (owner of the Call-of-the-Wild lodge) and his little son, one more person (whose name I do not know) with unbelievable spotting skills at night, wielding a spotlight.
Contact: Robert Wynands (wynands@mail.iap.uni-bonn.de)
Optics: One Optolyth spotting scope (30x magnification, 80mm lens aperture), two high-quality 7x42 Zeiss binoculars.
Conditions: Slightly overcast sky, rather cold (though above freezing), no wind, dry, moon almost in last quarter. Too dark to see anything clearly without artificial light.
Location: Near Betalghat (half-way between Ramnagar and Almora on the Kosi River. The bird was found by the man operating the spotlight. It was sitting high in a cliff at the Northern side of the road, on a bare patch of rock, about 30-40m away from us. Initially we saw it in an identical pose to that pictured in Grimmet/Inskipp/Inskipp: fully sideways, facing right. After a few minutes we switched off the light for a few seconds, and after switch-on the bird had rotated ccw by 90 degrees so that it was turning its back towards us. But since the rock face was slanted towards us we could still see the back of it and its head, especially when it turned it to follow the flutter of a moth.
Diagnostic marks:
We did not check further field marks because we discovered only later that according to the distribution maps in the field guide this bird has not been recorded in Kumaon to date. However, according to volume 5 of the Handbook of the Birds of the World, this is the largest of all nightjars by a comfortable margin of 5cm or so. Any nightjar from the 30-35cm class would be an even greater sensation (vagrant from Borneo or so...). So the Great Eared Nightjar is really the only choice.