They come out to hunt at night, nocturnal insects be warned! At dark, like little feathered dragons, the adorably bug-eyed great eared nightjar alights and, ever-so-adeptly, snatches flying insects on the wing, inhaling them with their disproportionately humongous mouths.
By day, these masterful mimics of their environment are nearly invisible. What is that, a bump on a log? A broken branch? A piece of tree bark? The disruptive patterns in the nightjar’s feathers—with endless shades of beige, brown, and grey—help to break up its shape, making the perfect camouflage.
Its peculiar flat head is in the habit of squishing down so that, in its woody habitat, it might seem like a branch when perched in a tree, or maybe just a pile of leaves when brooding in its landbound nest on the forest floor. This highly charismatic bird also sports barred wings and a white throat band. But most prominent of all, the great eared nightjar’s long, lynx-like ear tufts are what garnered the bird its Latin name: Lyncornis macrotis, literally meaning long-eared lynx bird.
Nightjars are a whole family of birds (called Caprimulgidae, in the Caprimulgiformes order) that includes about 100 species. Every continent except Antarctica is home to them, though the great eared nightjar specifically lives in Southwest India and parts of Southeast Asia.
Zoologist Nicholas Aylward Vigors happened to be in the neighborhood of Manilla, in the Philippines, when he discovered the great eared nightjar in 1831 and bequeathed its Latin name. Notably, this avian of the night was placed in the genus Eurostopodus before being switched over, alongside the closely related Malaysian eared nightjar, to the resurrected genus Lyncornis following a molecular genetic study published in 2010.
The largest in this family of birds, great eared nightjars have relatively large wings for their body size, short legs, and a cavernous maw for gulping down insects in mid-flight (they’re serious acrobats!). In length, they measure about 1 foot or slightly longer. Nocturnal hunters, they have reflective cells behind their retina, imbuing them with extraordinary night vision.
During mating, females lay a single egg in a nest contained within a scrape in the ground. Both parents take turns brooding. Once the chick has hatched, they will feed it until it can fend for itself.
On the subject of names, nightjars have been called other things. Less seemly things. Rumors sometimes die hard, and the likes of Aristotle and Pliny, among others, have perpetuated a myth. Our ancestors held that nightjars would latch onto the teats of goats, drain them dry, and even blind them, hence they were bequeathed the name “goatsuckers.”
Modern scientists have called it absurd, but have also pondered the meaning: The birds’ gaping maws might have seemed a perfect fit on the teats of goats, and perhaps nightjars would have been attracted by insects associating with livestock in those days. Now, scientists say it’s not likely they fed directly off the backs, underbellies, teats, or any other parts of animals. Maybe they were noticed snatching bugs near their fly-bitten hoofs.
We may never know for sure. But what’s certain is that both writers and scientists alike have taken all the myths with a healthy dose of salt!
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