Sunday, June 18, 2006

Savanna Nightjar Caprimulgus affinis by Foo Sai Khoon

Excellent writeup with great pics to boot! No mention of locality where he spotted this one but he does mention where u can see them

here's a preview of his writeup
"Nightjars are birds of legend. In the 17th century Britain, nightjars are thought to be "goatsucker" as people really believed that nightjars visited goats at night and drank their milk! Incidentally, Caprimulgus is a latin word for goatsucker. So you can imagine there are calls for action and cries for the creature blood. But none of the frightened crowd volunteers to venture out into the night ……
In south-eastern parts of USA, it was once thought that the number of times a Whip-poor-will (related to nightjar) sang in succession indicated the number of years it would be before a man married.
In Sulawesi, the Satanic or Diabolical Nightjar (Eurostopodus diabolicus) was named because of the belief that the call it made by night was the sound of it pulling out people eyes!"

p.s. sorry for the long break in posting i shall endeavour to post more frequently!

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