Ground-nesting night birds with tiny useless feet
Nightjars of family Caprimulgidae are medium nocturnal or dusk-flying birds with long wings, short legs, and stubby bills; some New World species are called nighthawks. They occur on every continent but Antarctica, nest on open ground, and vanish by day through camouflage plumage and odd perching.
Tiny feet barely walk; pointed wings power the hunt for aerial insects. Typical nightjars wear rictal bristles, longer bills, and soft plumage. Open country with scattered plants suits them from Seychelles to New Caledonia island groups as well as mainland ranges.
Taxonomy slimmed in 2021: the International Ornithological Congress restricted Caprimulgiformes to nightjars alone, peeling away swifts, owlet-nightjars, potoos, frogmouths, and oilbirds into other orders once lumped with them.
Two subfamilies were traditionally recognised, the typical nightjars and the short-billed Chordeilinae, but molecular studies do not support that split. The largest genus, Caprimulgus, has 39 species including the European nightjar, and Chordeiles holds six, among them the common nighthawk. The common poorwill, Phalaenoptilus nuttallii, is the only bird known to hibernate, staying torpid with a sharply lowered body temperature for weeks or months. A fossil species, Ventivorus ragei, was described in 1988 from southwest France on the basis of two partial coracoid bones.
They avoid extreme deserts but range from sea level to 4,200 metres. Nighthawks live only in the Americas and eared nightjars only in Asia and Australia. Northern breeders such as the European nightjar and common nighthawk fly south for winter. Females lay one or two patterned eggs on bare ground, and the habit of resting on roads makes roadkill a major cause of death. Nebraska was once nicknamed the Bugeater State, probably after the nighthawk, and Elton John's song Come Down in Time mentions a cluster of nightjars singing out of tune.
Source: Nightjar
