The tale of a man who went to Ethiopia in hopes of spotting the rare bird Nechisar Nightjar
I’m only 20 pages into Vernon Head’s book, and I wasn’t able to attend his talk at the Explorers Club Monday night. So it wasn’t until we met for lunch the following afternoon that I discovered he’d actually spotted “The Rarest Bird In The World,” which also happens to be the title of his book.
The species is known as the Nechisar Nightjar and he saw it on a 2009 expedition to Ethiopia. Until then it was known only by a single wing found in 1990. “It’s the first time a species has been identified by just a wing,” Mr. Head, a South African architect and passionate bird watcher, explained. “They found the wing on a smuggler’s track squished into the mud.”
But I looked up the bird before our meeting and couldn’t find any confirmation that it had been seen in the flesh, or rather the feather, I suppose. And talk about “burying the lead,” neither the book’s dust jacket nor the news release that accompanied it made any mention of his team’s discovery.
Perhaps it was a conspiracy to preserve the suspense. “This is the thing about bird watching,” Mr. Head said. “The word ‘truth’ is a very important component. You can never lie to yourself.”
I wasn’t doubting him. I bird watch. I would never say I had seen a bird if I hadn’t. The person you’d be deceiving most of all is yourself. The only reason to pursue the hobby in the first place is to revel in the wonders of nature; experience is the ultimate prize.
“But science is a different story,” Mr. Head went on. When we met, he was on his way home to South Africa after spotting another rare bird, the three-wattled bellbird, in Costa Rica. “Science wants a paper and perhaps a specimen.”
ENLARGEMr. Head’s story is compelling, even absent scientific proof. “We didn’t know what to listen for, but we knew what to look for,” he said of his trip to Ethiopia. “On the carpal joint of the wing there’s this massive creamy white patch.”
Mr. Head painted an image in words, not just of the bird, but of the adventurous, almost Victorian circumstances that undoubtedly charmed the Explorers Club, an organization that counts among its members Sir Edmund Hillary and Neil Armstrong.
He said the locals were armed with both spears and AK-47s—something about a dispute over grazing lands—and that the land where he and his group of fellow birders spotted the Nechisar Nightjar was a place of singular beauty.
“This plain is the most exquisite place I’ve ever seen,” reported Mr. Head, describing a valley of white grass and black volcanic soil. “And on this plain was found this wing.”
He actually spotted the bird on the first night of their expedition. They were driving along in their jeeps, sweeping a spotlight over the terrain, when their quarry took flight.
“This bird lifted off and none of us could believe our eyes,” he remembered. “The nightjar flies like a moth. It’s a slow, fluttering flight. We got two or three spotlights onto it and two or three binoculars and were able to see clearly what it was.”
His team, which includedIan Sinclair, the author of numerous African bird guides, returned the next night in the hopes of capturing a specimen by using a net fashioned from the mosquito netting from their beds.
“We just wanted to see it,” Mr. Head explained. “But then this whole question of proof and truth became the whole story. Now there’s the possibility of contributing to science. Now what do we do?”
Sure enough, they spotted the bird again. “It flew up and landed and we kept our torches on it,” Mr. Head recalled. “Ian Sinclair walked ahead and I tried to direct him to the spot to swing it down on the bird. And he missed it. It flew off again and we never saw it again.”
Mr. Head plans on returning to Ethiopia with the ambition to land a live specimen. He said the actor Alan Rickman read his book and expressed interest in making a movie based on it before he died in January. In the meantime, there are other rare birds to be pursued. Next up is the White-chested Tinkerbird, endemic to the Zambezian Cryptosepalum dry forests of Zambia.
Mr. Head said it’s a nasty place. “Impenetrable forest,” he said. “Every time you open your mouth it gets filled with sweat bees. They’re stingless but extremely unpleasant.”