Common Nightjar - a nocturnal bird.
Its back is brownish-gray, with darker mottling and blackish longitudinal stripes, and a rusty hue. The belly is ochre-brown, with blackish-brown transverse thin stripes.
There are two white spots on the throat. On the inner web of the first three primary flight feathers, there is a large white spot, and white tips are also present on the two outer pairs of tail feathers. The common nightjar is a migratory bird. It inhabits the edges of forests, steppes, and semi-deserts, as long as there are sparse trees and shrubs growing there.
The common nightjar almost never builds nests. It lays two whitish eggs directly on the ground, from which sighted chicks covered in brown down emerge. The birds begin incubating immediately after laying the first egg. Both sexes take turns incubating the eggs. The incubation period lasts 17-18 days. Sometimes, if they sense danger during incubation, the birds may move their clutch to another location. The chicks hatch with their eyes open and are covered in dense brown down. Since incubation starts with the first egg, the second chick hatches more than a day later than the first. Hatching occurs at night. The parents feed the chicks until they fledge, and even after they learn to fly, they continue to feed them for some time. Young birds differ from adults by having shorter tails.
Nightjars are crepuscular, long-winged, silently flying birds. Sometimes they "quiver" in one spot, as, for example, a kestrel does. During the day, the bird sits on the ground in the shade and is hard to spot. Sometimes it perches on a horizontal branch of a tree, not across it, but along it. Nightjars are not very afraid of humans and can fly quite close to them during hunting; they can even enter villages. The name "nightjar" was given by Europeans due to the bird's habit of accompanying goats and sheep returning from pastures in the evenings. People thought the bird was swirling right under their feet, probably trying to latch onto a goat's udder, full of milk. In reality, the nightjar is simply catching insects that have flown out from under the hooves. It is found everywhere.
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