Center for Conservation Biology | Creating your own route

Creating your own route has several advantages such as choosing a location near your home that is easy to access or a particular area you are specifically interested in monitoring for Nightjars.

There are several considerations to keep in mind when creating a route:

Safety -Do not place routes along busy roads or highways and choose places where you can pull off the road safely to conduct a Nightjar count. Busy roads make for poor listening conditions anyway. For more safety considerations click here.

Overlapping with existing routes - Be sure to choose an area that does not overlap with an existing route. Our target is to have 1-2 routes starting points per county. To view the number of existing routes in your state click here. Be sure to register your route with the survey coordinator (Mike Wilson, mdwils@wm.edu)

Species' biology and habiat use - Both Whip-poor-wills and Chuck-will’s Widows require forested areas for nesting but frequently use open areas such as agricultural areas, marshes,recent clear-cuts, grasslands, and savannahs for foraging. Forested landscapes including those with large habitat openings are ideal situations for route placement. A general rule of thumb is to choose the landscape composition over the placement of any individual stopping points. Not all stopping points are expected to support Nightjars. Variation in the number and incidence of Nightjars between points does provide valuable comparisons between routes and regions.

Continuity - Routes are composed of 10 stopping points placed 1 mile apart. Thus, you must consider choosing a set of roads where routes can extend for 9 uninterrupted miles. Use multiple roads if necessary. Making left and right hand turns along the route are expected. Examine existing routes as examples.

Maintaining a 1-mile separation between stopping points - Not every stopping point has to be “ideally” placed to count Nightjars. Nightjars vocalizations are loud so you will be able to detect Nightjars from distances of 1/3 mile (~500m) or greater. Keeping stops 1 mile apart ensures that you will not count the same birds twice and maintains a scientifically uniform sampling scheme. You may need to vary the distance between points by 1 or 2 tenths of a mile to choose a safe place to park during a stop. It is better to add space between points rather than shortening this distance.

Documenting Nightjar Survey stopping points - Mapping the specific location of stops along your route is important for data analysis and archival.