Trinity Hill

Last night myself and two friends Paul and Aiden made our way to Trinity Hill just outside of  Axminster. This is a traditional site for European Nightjar and I've been coming here for over twenty years now. We were joined tonight by my long time birding pals Tim and Andy.
We arrived at the site around 8.30pm with the sun still shining(not the conditions I was hoping for) but soon a mist had come down and the conditions became more suitable for a successful evening.
We took up position in our usual spot but noticed that the vegetation had grown considerably since last year.
At around 9.20pm Paul, who had taken a walk along the track to warm up came back with the news that Nightjars were calling in the next clearing over at almost the same time as we heard them calling from some distance away.
We relocated to the next clearing and immediately had a Nightjar 'churring' in a tree in front of us and then a another fly past our position on the track and land in the tree next to us.

European Nightjar (Caprimulgus europaeus)

We then proceeded to watch for around twenty minutes as the birds continued to give their strange 'churring' call and 'kriek' contact calls as they flew around the clearing.

This is one of my favourite trips of the year and I can never get over the fact that this goes on every night throughout the summer and 90% of the population will never know about it.