nigntbirds

Nightjars are medium-sized nocturnal or crepuscular birds with long wings, short legs and very short bills. They are sometimes referred to as goatsuckers from the mistaken belief that they suck milk from goats . Some New World species are named as nighthawks. Nightjars usually nest on the ground.

 

Nightjars are found around the world. They are mostly active in the late evening and early morning or at night, and feed predominantly on moths and other large flying insects.

 

Most have small feet, of little use for walking, and long pointed wings. Their soft plumage is cryptically coloured to resemble bark or leaves. Some species, unusual for birds, perch along a branch, rather than across it. This helps to conceal them during the day. Bracken is their preferred habitat.

 

The Common Poorwill, Phalaenoptilus nuttallii is unique as a bird that undergoes a form of hibernation, becoming torpid and with a much reduced body temperature for weeks or months, although other nightjars can enter a state of torpor for shorter periods.

 

Nightjars lay one or two patterned eggs directly onto bare ground. It has been suggested that nightjars will move their eggs and chicks from the nesting site in the event of danger by carrying them in their mouths. This suggestion has been repeated many times in ornithology books, but while this may accidentally happen, surveys of nightjar research have found very little evidence to support this idea

Working out conservation strategies for some species of nightjar presents a particular challenge common to other hard-to-see families of birds; in a few cases, humans do not have enough data on whether a bird is rare or not. This has nothing to do with any lack of effort. It reflects, rather, the difficulty in locating and identifying a small number of those species of birds among the 10,000 or so that existing in the world, given the limitations of human beings. A perfect example is eh Vaurie's Nightjar in China's south-western Xinjiang. It has been seen for sure only once, in 1929, a specimen that was held in the hand. Surveys in the 1970s and 1990s failed to find it.It is perfectly possible that it has evolved as a species that can only really be identified in the wild by other Vaurie's Nightjars, rather than by humans. As a result, scientists do not know whether it is extinct, endangered, or even locally common. Humans must always remember that birds have not been designed for humans to see and identify them. The fact that humans can see and identify them is merely a happy accident.

 

Traditionally, nightjars have been divided into two subfamilies: the Caprimulginae, or typical nightjars with about 70 species, and the Chordeilinae, or nighthawks of the New World with about 9 species. The two groups are similar in most respects, but the typical nightjars have rictal bristles, longer bills, and softer plumage. In their pioneering DNA-DNA hybridisation work, Sibley and Ahlquist found that the genetic difference between the eared-nightjars and the typical nightjars was, in fact, greater than that between the typical nightjars and the nighthawks of the New World. Accordingly, they placed the eared-nightjars in a separate family: Eurostopodidae.

 

Subsequent work, both morphological and genetic, has provided support for the separation of the typical and the eared-nightjars, and some authorities have adopted this Sibley-Ahlquist recommendation, and also the more far-reaching one to group all the owls (traditionally Strigiformes) together in the Caprimulgiformes. The listing below retains a more orthodox arrangement, but recognises the eared-nightjars as a separate group. For more detail and an alternative classification scheme, see Caprimulgiformes and Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy.

 

Caprimulgus is a large and very widespread genus of nightjars, medium-sized nocturnal birds with long pointed wings, short legs and short bills. The name is derived from the Latin for goatsucker, based on the ancient, but mistaken, belief that the European Nightjar would suck milk from goats.

 

Caprimulgus nightjars are found around the world, and like other nightjars they usually nest on the ground. They are mostly active in the late evening and early morning or at night, and feed predominantly on moths and other large flying insects.

 

Most have small feet, of little use for walking, and their soft plumage is cryptically coloured to resemble bark or leaves. Some species, unusually for birds, perch along a branch, rather than across it, which helps to conceal them during the day. Temperate species are strongly migratory, wintering in the tropics.

 

Caprimulgus species have relatively long bills and rictal bristles. Many have repetitive and often mechanical songs.

 

The Tawny-collared Nightjar is a species of nightjar in the Caprimulgidae family. It is found in Mexico and Nicaragua. Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical dry forests.

 

The Nechisar Nightjar (Caprimulgus solala) is a species of nightjar in the Caprimulgidae family. It is endemic to Ethiopia.

 

The species was first discovered in 1990 when researchers discovered a decomposing specimen in the Nechisar National Park. After bringing back a single wing from the specimen to the Natural History Museum in London, it was determined to be a previously unknown species. Its specific name, solala, means "only a wing".

 

Its natural habitat is subtropical or tropical dry lowland grassland; it is threatened by habitat loss.

 

An expedition to the area the wing was found located the nightjar on the first night they arrived on scene. The bird was easily distinguishable from the more common smaller nightjars in the area, being a large nightjar with huge white carpal parches and was seen several times in the next few nights. The specimen observed appeared to be a male, while the museum wing specimen had a more buffy carpal patch and appeared to be that of an immature of female bird.

The Hispaniola Nightjar (Caprimulgus ekmani) is a species of nightjar in the Caprimulgidae family. It is found in Haiti an