MOUTH OF GOATSUCKER.
From the adjoining woodcut it will be seen that a Nightjar is indeed a Fissirostral, or wide-gaping bird, and this large mouth is characteristic of the whole family. Their soft mottled plumage, their large eyes, and their habit of flying by night, have induced many naturalists to place them in close proximity to the Owls, with which family of birds, however, they have nothing further in common. Members of the family of Goatsuckers are distributed nearly all over the world, with the exception of the islands of Oceania, and a great difference is observable in their size and form, and to some extent in their habits. Thus the Guacharo, or Oil-bird (Steatornis[282] caripensis), is met with only in the island of Trinidad, where it is also called Diablotin, and where it inhabits the inmost recesses of caverns, either by the sea or inland. The birds spend the entire day in these dark recesses, and come out only at night to procure their food, which consists of the fruits of different palms, the seeds of which are rejected, and form, with the droppings of the birds, a thick flooring of guano in some of the caves. Sometimes the bird forms a huge cradle of this deposit, apparently for the greater security of its young ones; and one of these singular nests, if such they may be called, is exhibited in the British Museum. The nestlings become very fat, and are sometimes eaten, but according to M. Léotand, in his work on the Birds of Trinidad, there is a certain odour about them which makes them unpalatable to the appetite of most people.
OIL-BIRD.
In India and in the Malayan Archipelago is found a group of Nightjars belonging to the genus Batrachostomus[283] popularly known as “Frog-mouths;” their place is taken in Australia and New Guinea by the giants of the family—the Podargi, examples of which are generally to be seen in the London Zoological Gardens. Of the Tawny-shouldered Podargus (P. strigoides[284]) Mr. Gould gives the following account:—“Like the rest of this genus, this species is strictly nocturnal, sleeping throughout the day on the dead branch of a tree, in an upright position across, and never parallel to, the branch, which it so nearly resembles as scarcely to be distinguished from it. I have occasionally seen it beneath the thick foliage of the Casuarinæ, and I have been informed that it sometimes shelters itself in the hollow trunks of the Eucalypti, but I could never detect one in such a situation; I mostly found them in pairs, perched near each other on the branches of the gums, in situations not at all sheltered from the beams of the midday sun. So lethargic are its slumbers, that it is almost impossible to arouse it, and I have frequently shot one without disturbing its mate, sitting close by; it may also be knocked off with sticks or stones, and sometimes it is even taken with the hand. When aroused, it flies lazily off, with heavy flapping wings, to a neighbouring tree, and again resumes its slumbers until the approach of evening, when it becomes as animated and active as it had been previously dull and stupid. The stomach of one I dissected induced me to believe that it does not usually capture its prey while on the wing, or subsist on nocturnal insects alone, but that it is in the habit of creeping among the branches in search of such as are in a state of repose. The power it possesses of shifting the position of the outer toe backwards, as circumstances may require, is a very singular feature, and may also tend to assist them in their progress among the branches. A bird I shot at Yarrundi, in the middle of the night, had the stomach filled with fresh-captured Mantis and Locusts (Phasmidæ and Cicadæ), which seldom move at night, and the latter of which are generally resting against the upright boles of the trees. In other specimens I found the remains of small Coleoptera, intermingled with the fibres of the roots of what appeared to be a parasitic plant, such as would be found in decayed and hollow trees. The whole contour of the bird shows that it is not formed for extensive flight or for performing those rapid evolutions that are necessary for the capture of its prey in the air: the wing being short and concave in comparison with those of the true aërial Nightjars, and particularly with the Australian form, to which I have given the name of Eurostopodus.
COMMON GOATSUCKER.
“Of its mode of nidification I can speak with confidence, having seen many pairs breeding during my rambles in the woods. It makes a slightly-constructed flat nest of sticks, carelessly interwoven together, and placed at the fork of a horizontal branch of sufficient size to ensure its safety; the trees most frequently chosen are the Eucalypti, but I have occasionally seen the nest on an appletree (Angophora) or a swamp-oak (Casuarina). In every instance one of the birds was sitting on the eggs, and the other perched on a neighbouring bough, both invariably asleep. That the male participates in the duty of incubation I ascertained by having shot a bird on the nest, which, on dissection, proved to be a male. The eggs are generally two in number, of a beautiful immaculate white, and of a long oval form, one inch and ten lines in length by one inch and three lines in diameter.
