The Nightjar Project: Sound Scrapes (Sound 1)
Sound Scrapes is part of a project that takes evocative recordings of Ghanaian life and transposes them into related environments here in the New Forest. The Nightjar Project uses the bird’s migration to represent the fluid movement of people, histories, cultures and ideas between the UK and Ghana.
From Dusk Till Dawn and Back Again
Press Play to listen
Kwame says, “Dusk is when the birds are preparing themselves. This is where they and we live because we have preserved and planted a lot of trees. Here it is still forest and all the animals and birds in the area come to rest.
My friend who is nervous of animals said, “Can we build on stilts?” And we sat down, and we said we had time, we’re not rushing, and so we started to build on stilts. And everything like snakes and monitor lizards can have the ground and we are up here, and it’s working.
The Dawn chorus, you can hear the river flowing. I feel like I’m sitting there. Most of the time I want to be quiet, basically, I want to move away, where nobody wants to go, so I can be quiet, that’s where I go.”
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An Interesting Fact About Nightjars
During the day, nightjars rest and hide from predators in their camouflage. They spend their days resting on the ground or in trees, well camouflaged by their mottled brown and grey feathers. Their camouflage makes them look like fallen logs, bracken, heather, or gravels.
Click the button to learn more about this project.




