Frogmouths | Podargiformes

Uilnachtzwaluwen | Podargiformes

Nocturnal birds with a broad, heavy bill that hinges wide open sideways, ringed by stiff bristles that enlarge the opening. The eyes are large and set more forward than in most birds, which gives depth of vision in poor light. The plumage is soft, grey-brown and marked like bark; by day the bird sits motionless on a branch with its bill raised and cannot be told from a broken stump. The feet are small and weak, for nothing is gripped with them. The group has only lately been separated from the nightjars on genomic evidence; the resemblance to those birds rests on a shared way of living and not on close kinship.

Families in this order

Frogmouths | Podargidae3 speciesUnlike the nightjars, these birds do not hunt on the wing. They sit on a low branch, wait, and drop onto prey on the ground: beetles, grasshoppers, snails, mice and small lizards, crushed with the heavy bill. The flight is slow and silent and is used over short distances. On cold nights and through the winter they lower their body temperature and fall into a torpor lasting hours, which saves energy when insects are scarce — unusual in a bird of this size. The nest is a thin, untidy saucer of twigs on a horizontal fork, often so open that the eggs can be seen from below; both parents incubate, the male by day. Disturbed, the bird stretches into a stiff, slanting stump and stops moving altogether.