18 Nov 2019: The Midnight Goatsucker

Ethiopia is a country of diverse landscapes and habitats, mainly due to being diagonally bisected by the Great Rift Valley. Our next destination, the Awash National Park, was situated about 225 kilometres east of Addis Ababa in the rolling acacia savanna of the Great Rift Valley. My accommodation was at the beautiful Awash Falls Lodge, where the dining area overlooks a series of majestic waterfalls. Lunch turned out to be an occasion to remember – it was a constant battle between a troop of monkeys and myself for the possession of my food. I won the war, but the monkeys did manage to win a few skirmishes. Fascinating to see was a group of crocodiles, arranged in a kind of battle line in a pool below the falls, just waiting for their fast-food takeaways to arrive from above.

Awash Falls Lodge

That evening, accompanied by an obligatory game guard, we went out on a night drive. We were hoping to find the elusive Star-spotted Nightjar. It isn’t hard to understand why these mysterious creatures became an object of superstition and folklore, as their nocturnal habits and strange calls haunt the night hours. In times past many believed that nightjars were the souls of unbaptised babies who were doomed to wander the night skies until Judgement Day. Since the time of Aristotle, the nightjar was thought to be a “goatsucker”, stealing milk from the teats of goats in the midnight hours. Furthermore, a goat who fell victim to a goatsucker would then stop producing milk and also go blind. So, armed with a torch and a sense of wonder I was hoping for a glimpse of this star-studded goatsucker.

Caught in the headlights of our vehicle, we found two Star-spotted Nightjars. These reclusive nightjars were very skittish. Try as I might, I could not get close enough for a decent photo before they flew away. The best approach to again find these ghostly birds was to extinguish all lights and remain deadly silent. After about ten minutes a strange, eery, yelping call filled the night. An answering call came from the opposite side of the road. And then another. If I were superstitious, I could easily believe that goatsuckers were surrounding us and were calling their mates to suck us dry. Here, in the dim starlight of the Ethiopian bush, one could easily believe in zombie nightjars.

Greyish Eagle Owl, Awash

Cape Eagle Owl, Awash

On our way back to the lodge we found both the Greyish Eagle Owl and the Cape Eagle Owl (subspecies dillonii). Back at the lodge a late supper was served out in the open, with a massive log fire in the background. Here I met a fellow South African and international tour guide, who was most helpful in sorting out some bird identification issues. He assured me that he knew of no teat-sucking birds in the vicinity, but he could not give the same professional opinion about some birders of our mutual acquaintance.

Awash Falls