Night Bird

[furtech]

While on a late walk this evening, we came across this bird sitting in the road. When we got close, it would flutter around, then land again in the road. Kept returning to this spot, though.

I managed to get this close-up pic of the bird on our return route.

Can anyone ID it? Roz? Tracy? I recognize it, but can't remember the name... "nightjar"?

Is that behavior normal?

Comments

[furtech.livejournal.com]

Oh, Cool! I was pretty sure it was a nightjar of some kind (they're pretty distinctive!). Thanks for the note on their feeding patterns: that pretty much describes exactly what it was doing. When I (or the dogs) got near, it would flutter up and around in a 50' circle, then return to about the same place. When it did not want to be found, it landed in some ground cover and (as could be expected) completely disappeared in plain sight.

I cheated for the photo: I noticed that when I used my flashlight to help the autofocus, the bird didn't fly away (bright point of light=not a threat; big, lumbering meat-monkey=threat, but the light blocked my image).