Archive for the 'Owls Frogmouths and Nightjars' Category

The Australian Owlet-nightjar DOES exist*.
This enigmatic little owl-like bird can be so frustrating. I have heard it calling many times in many places. It often calls at night from somewhere in our garden - but I’ve spent fruitless hours looking for glimpse of one. My only really good sighting occurred a few years ago in […]

The Australian Owlet-nightjar is a relatively common bird throughout much of Australia. With an overall size of 21-25cm it is our smallest nocturnal bird. In fact, the first time I saw this birds I was amazed at how tiny it really was. This individual was perched in full sunlight on a branch of a tree […]

Powerful Owl
2007 Australian Capital Territory trip report #14
During the weeks before departing on our holiday in the eastern states in September, I had read of reports of various birds present in the Canberra region. I had subscribed to the local birding newsgroup, Canberra Birds, on the internet. One of the birds that interested me was […]

Nocturnal: active at night, such as owls. (The opposite is diurnal, or active in the day time.)

I should go out birding more at night.
After all, if I want to actually see nocturnal birds, as opposed to merely hearing them, I have to make the effort to get out there in […]

Stephen Ambrose is a regular contributor to the Birding-Aus forum and he has also contributed to this series of posts on birding bloopers. His experience just goes to show several facts about birds:

Birds are unpredictable.
Birds do not read the field guides
Birds never follow your script
Birds convince you that you must expect the unexpected.

Here is Stephen’s […]