Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE ROLLER-LIKE BIRDS

THE GOATSUCKERS AND THEIR ALLIES

THE FROGMOUTHS

True Frogmouths

The true Frogmouths (Podargus), of which seven or eight forms are known, may be taken as typical of the first subfamily. They are mostly birds of large size, some of them reaching a length of twenty-one inches, and have the tail-feathers pointed, the central pair being much longer than the adjoining pairs.

They are confined to the Papuan Islands, Australia, and Tasmania, and are described by Gould as being an”inanimate and sluggish group of birds, and depend for their supplies less upon their power of flight than upon the habit they are said to have of traversing the branches of various trees upon which their favorite insects reside. The Tawny-shouldered Frogmouth (P. strigoides) of Australia and Tasmania is one of the best-known species, and may be selected for description, as the others agree closely with it in habits. About eighteen or nineteen inches in length, of which the tail is fully nine inches, the upper plumage is gray, vermiculated and shaded with brown and spotted with white, all the feathers with broad black shaft-lines, while the shoulders and wings are tawny, and the lower parts whitish gray shading into tawny, with black stripes on throat and breast. There appears to be considerable individual variation, some examples being much lighter, others darker, and others again more mottled.

They frequent a great variety of places, as the thick brushes near the coast, the hilly districts, and the thinly wooded plains of the interior, and are strictly nocturnal, sleeping through the day on the dead branch of a tree, in an upright position across, and never parallel to, the branch, which they so much resemble as scarcely to be distinguished from it.

They are usually observed in pairs, sitting near each other on the branches and often not at all sheltered from the sun.”So lethargic are its slumbers,”says Gould,”that it is almost impossible to arouse it, and I have frequently shot one without disturbing its mate sitting close by. When aroused, it flies lazily off with heavy, flopping wings to a neighboring 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.”It is of course silent during the day, but at night it has a loud, hoarse call of two distinct notes, which can hardly be described.

They make a slightly constructed flat nest of small sticks carelessly interwoven together, and placed at the fork of a horizontal branch of sufficient size to insure its safety. The eggs are usually two in number, pure white, and of a long, oval shape. Both sexes assist in incubation, and the young are covered with a white down, but they soon attain adult plumage. The largest species is the Papuan Frogmouth (P. papuensis) of the Papuan Islands and northern Australia, which attains a length of twenty-one inches, and the smallest is the Marbled Frogmouth (P. ocellatus), also of the Papuan Islands, which is only thirteen inches long.

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