Rare Sykes's nightjar spotted at Dombivli's Kopar Ganesh Ghat after more than a century

News of a Sykes's nightjar sighting at Kopar Ganesh Ghat in Dombivli has excited birdwatchers. The bird is usually found in the dry areas of north-west India. Birdwatchers in Dombivli saw it on October 29. If the sighting is recorded, it will be the first record of the species in the area in more than a hundred years and will add an important name to the region's bird records.

Wildlife enthusiast Prashant Bhagat saw it at around 8.45 am. Fellow birdwatcher Milind Ganatra was with him. At first, both thought it was a common snipe. But when they looked closely at its flight, they suspected it could be a nightjar. The manner of its flight pointed that way.

Photographing it was not easy. The bird is shy and blends in very well with its surroundings. It moved into tall grass. After considerable effort, the birdwatchers managed to take photographs that allowed a firm identification. Experts later identified it as a Sykes's nightjar.

According to Bhagat, he uploaded the photographs to eBird, a global bird-record platform run by the Cornell Lab of Ornithology in the US. The same day, an eBird reviewer checked and approved the entry, which lent further credibility to the claim.

The earlier record of the species in the area makes this a rare opportunity. According to the records of the Bombay Natural History Society (BNHS), a specimen of a female Sykes's nightjar was collected from somewhere in Kalyan in October 1915. After that, wildlife enthusiast and bird observer Akshay Shinde saw it at the Bhandup pumping station in January 2019. That is, it was recorded after a gap of more than a hundred years.

The species is listed as Least Concern on the Red List of the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN). Its appearance in Dombivli shows how important it is to record bird sightings and track changes in the birds' distribution.

It is also known as the Sind nightjar. It is common in Gujarat and Rajasthan and lives in dry, open scrubland. In Maharashtra, the Indian nightjar and the savanna nightjar are resident birds, while the Sykes's nightjar is an occasional visitor to the Mumbai Metropolitan Region.