The month of April 2015 must be a lucky month for me. For some reason, I began to get regular visits from a Large-Tailed Nightjar, almost daily for over a span of a month-and-a-half. I don't have the slightest clue if this is just one particular bird. But one thing is certain: when it does come to my front yard, it will very much likely perch on the telephone wire at a distance of not more than 10 feet away from my bedroom window. Without a doubt, an ideal position for taking some photographs with my low end compact digital camera, a Nikon 
A Very Peculiar Bird
As they are nocturnal birds, Nightjars will only be active at night between 7 p.m. and 7 a.m. They have a distinctive call "Tok Tok Tok", sounding a lot like someone pounding a mallet on a wooden log. But from what I have observed though, they sometimes fly in quietly without making any sound.
I have been aware of this bird since I was 3 but I have never seen one until about 10 years ago. Unfortunately, it was always from afar and in the dark, never up close.
Since I have not done any night photography before, I actually had to make a couple of tries over a few nights before I started getting worthy shots with my camera. My first attempt was a disaster. They were dark and grainy. In my effort to work in stealth and not scare the bird away, I decided to take a shot at about 2 feet away from my window, i.e from within my room. The flash did fire alright, but it didn't fully illuminate the bird because of the walls in my room. Hence, my bad shots.
Funny thing though - the bird was unperturbed by my actions or the firing of the flash. It just stared at me for some peculiar reason, as you can see in these 3 pictures. They are as tame as pigeons, I think.
But they do fly away sometimes - as pigeons do too sometimes. On my estimates, perhaps 15% of the time. With an 85% chance that they don't, I became braver subsequently. Instead of working in stealth, I began placing my camera on one of the 8 horizontal iron bars that run across my window, just above the windowsill, in full view of the bird. So now when the flash fires, the bird will be fully illuminated.
Camera Settings
While taking these night shots, the LCD display on the camera was practically 90% pitch-black, always. All that I could see on the display was just the neighbour's front porch light. Not surprisingly, "auto focus" (by pressing the shutter-release button halfway) was not possible. To be honest, I was just making guesstimate when framing the shots. Not surprisingly, most came out off-centered. Practically a shot in the dark really. Thanks to cropping, they don't look that way.
Hoping that it will do its magic, I set the camera's shooting mode to "auto" - focusing at infinity I believe since I can't actually focus on anything. Flash was set to "auto" too, obviously. I started off the zoom level at 3x optical zoom, but subsequently increased it to 5x (the maximum) in later shots. As I do not have steady hands, I anchored the camera on one of the 8 horizontal iron bars that run across my window, as I have mentioned above. This is to minimise getting blurry shots. Image size is set to 16 Megapixels.
Editing
The only editing that I did with these photographs were just cropping and resizing. I tried to apply some red-eye reduction but there does not seem to be any effect. So I just 'undo' them. Likewise with sharpening - the outcome doesn't look natural.
If only this bird will come around when there is still some light at either dawn or dusk then I can use the the "auto focus" feature on my camera. With the flash set to "auto", I am quite certain that I can get a clearer and sharper picture. I can only hope for the moment.
I haven't seen or heard of any Nightjars in the neighbourhood for about 10 days now. I wonder where it has gone to? I don't think they are migratory birds. So they must be somewhere around the district.
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