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17 August 2024

Juvenile Egyptian Nightjars - Jubail

Whilst birding the Jubail area 9 August we found 13 Egyptian Nightjars with at least five juveniles. The plumage is very fresh and smoothly soft, and they pretty much all have nice, neat white fringed coverts forming neat lines across the wing as well as the tertial tips. The birds are lacking the honey-orange spots on the shoulder of the wing that adults show with the adults also generally having darker plumage than the juveniles. Adult birds at this time of year are mainly in heavy primary moult with up to 4 to 6 new inner primaries that can easily be seen on birds in flight whereas a single bird seen well in flight had all new flight feathers again indicating it was a juvenile. Although no nests have been found juveniles occur here in July each year for the last five years some of which can hardly fly indicating they breed here. Bottom two photos are adult birds.