Birds and Birding's Guide to:

Watching THE ROLLER-LIKE BIRDS

THE GOATSUCKERS AND THEIR ALLIES

(Suborder Caprimulgi)

The third of the suborders into which the Coraciiformes is divided, is a relatively small, though widely spread, group of medium-sized birds known variously as Goatsuckers, Nightjars, Frogmouths, etc.

They have rather compact bodies, with short legs, long, pointed wings with ten primary quills, a widely gaping mouth, and generally softly tinted gray and brown plumage; the tail-feathers are ten in number. They are further distinguished structurally by having the skull holorhinal, that is, with the nasal bones only slightly or not at all cleft, the organ of voice (syrinx) bronchial, and the oil-gland nude, when present, while the after-shaft to the feathers is present, though small, and the blind intestine (caeca) present and functional. The young are hatched helpless, but covered with down, and all the members of the suborder are crepuscular and nocturnal.

As regards the position of this group, Mr. Beddard says: “The relationship of the Caprimulgi to other groups is a puzzle hard of solution.

This is partly, perhaps, due to the fact that the Goatsuckers are probably a somewhat ancient group.”He decided, from all the evidence, that their nearest relatives are the Owls, a conclusion which”is in harmony with much recent opinion, and is curious in view of the external likenesses which bind together the two groups of birds, likenesses which might fairly be put down to similarity of habit.

These superficial resemblances are, however, enforced by more deep-lying structural similarities.”Of these it may be mentioned that the Owls come nearest to them in the”primitive character of the gut, while the caeca, swollen at the ends, are alike in both. The Owls, too, are nearly the only other coraciiform birds besides the Caprimulgi, which have well-defined basipterygoid processes."

The Caprimulgi is divided into three families — the Steatomithida, which comprises only the peculiar Oil-bird, the Podargida, or Frogmouths, of which there are three genera and about thirty-five species, and the Caprimulgida, or Goatsuckers or Nightjars. The latter family is separated into two well-marked subfamilies — the Caprimulgina and Nyctibiince, — and comprises twenty genera and about one hundred and twenty-five species and subspecies. The characters separating them are described more fully later.

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