| Frogmouths | |
|---|---|
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| Tawny frogmouth, at night | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Domain: | Eukaryota |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Aves |
| Clade: | Strisores |
| Clade: | Vanescaves |
| Order: | Podargiformes Matthews, 1918 |
| Family: | Podargidae Gray, 1847 |
| Genera | |
The frogmouths (Podargidae) are a group of nocturnal birds related to owlet-nightjars, swifts, and hummingbirds. Species in the group are distributed in the Indomalayan and Australasian realms.
They are named for their large flattened hooked bill and huge frog-like gape, which they use to capture insects. The three Podargus species are large frogmouths restricted to Australia and New Guinea, that have massive flat broad bills. They are known to take larger prey, such as small vertebrates (frogs, mice, etc.), which are sometimes beaten against a stone before swallowing. [1] The ten Batrachostomus frogmouths are found in tropical Asia. They have smaller, more rounded bills and are predominantly insectivorous. Both Podargus and Batrachostomus have bristles around the base of the bill, and Batrachostomus has other, longer bristles which may exist to protect the eyes from insect prey. [1] In April 2007, a new species of frogmouth was described from the Solomon Islands and placed in a newly established genus, Rigidipenna. [2]
Their flight is weak. They rest horizontally on branches during the day, camouflaged by their cryptic plumage. Through convergent evolution as night hunters, they resemble owls, with large front-facing eyes.
Up to three white eggs are laid in the fork of a branch, and are incubated by the female at night and the male in the day.
DNA-DNA hybridisation studies had suggested that the two frogmouth groups may not be as closely related as previously thought, and that the Asian species may be separable as a new family, the Batrachostomidae. [3] [4] Although frogmouths were formerly included in the order Caprimulgiformes, a 2019 study estimated the divergence between Podargus and Batrachostomus to between 30 and 50 mya and forming a clade well separated from the nightjars and being a sister group of the swifts, hummingbirds, and owlet-nightjars. The name Podargiformes proposed in 1918 by Gregory Mathews was reinstated for the clade. [5]
In a journal article published in April 2021, researchers Katja Thömmes and Gregor Hayn-Leichsenring from the Experimental Aesthetics group at the University Hospital Jena, Germany, found the frogmouth to be the most "instagrammable" bird species. [6] Using an algorithm to analyze the aesthetic appeal of more than 27,000 bird photographs on Instagram, they found that photos depicting frogmouths received the highest number of likes relative to the posts' exposure to users. The journal article was picked up by several news outlets, including The New York Times and The Guardian . [7]
Nightjars are medium-sized nocturnal or crepuscular birds in the family Caprimulgidae and order Caprimulgiformes, characterised by long wings, short legs, and very short bills. They are sometimes called goatsuckers, due to the ancient folk tale that they sucked the milk from goats, or bugeaters, their primary source of food being insects. Some New World species are called nighthawks. The English word "nightjar" originally referred to the European nightjar.
The Sibley–Ahlquist taxonomy is a bird taxonomy proposed by Charles Sibley and Jon E. Ahlquist. It is based on DNA–DNA hybridization studies conducted in the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s.
Traditionally, the bird order Apodiformes contained three living families: the swifts (Apodidae), the treeswifts (Hemiprocnidae), and the hummingbirds (Trochilidae). In the Sibley-Ahlquist taxonomy, this order is raised to a superorder Apodimorphae in which hummingbirds are separated as a new order, Trochiliformes. With nearly 450 species identified to date, they are the most diverse order of birds after the passerines.
Owlet-nightjars are small crepuscular birds related to the nightjars and frogmouths. Most are native to New Guinea, but some species extend to Australia, the Moluccas, and New Caledonia. A flightless species from New Zealand is extinct. There is a single monotypic family Aegothelidae with the genus Aegotheles.
The tawny frogmouth is a species of frogmouth native to the Australian mainland and Tasmania and found throughout. It is a big-headed, stocky bird often mistaken for an owl due to its nocturnal habits and similar colouring.
The eared nightjars are a small group of nocturnal birds in the nightjar family, although the taxonomy is uncertain. There are seven species, mainly found in forest and scrub from China to Australia. Five species are placed in the genus, Eurostopodus, the other two species in Lyncornis. They are long winged birds with plumage patterned with grey and brown to camouflage them when resting on the ground. They feed on insects caught in flight. A single white egg is laid directly on the ground and incubated by both adults. The chicks can walk soon after hatching.
The Philippine frogmouth is a nocturnal bird that can be found throughout the Philippine archipelago. It is common in lowland forests and maturing second growth. There is little information about the bird. It feeds on grasshoppers, cicadas, crickets and beetles.
The Solomons frogmouth, also known as the Cinnamon frogmouth or Solomon Islands frogmouth, is a bird in the frogmouth family. It was first described in 1901, but not recognized as a distinct species until 2007. The Solomons frogmouth is the only known member of the genus Rigidipenna. It is also endemic to the islands of Isabel, Bougainville and Guadalcanal in the Solomon Islands archipelago, in the countries of Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands.
Blyth’s frogmouth is a species of bird in the family Podargidae. It was previously considered to be conspecific with the Javan frogmouth and Palawan frogmouth. The bird is a tropical species that ranges from India to Australia.
The large frogmouth is a species of bird in the family Podargidae. It is found in Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, and Thailand, in subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest. Logging of its habitat poses a risk to its survival, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature has listed it as being "near-threatened".
Hodgson's frogmouth is a species of bird in the family Podargidae. It is found in Bangladesh, Bhutan, China, India, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand, and Vietnam. Its natural habitat is temperate forests.
The Javan frogmouth, sometimes known as Horsfield's frogmouth, is a species of bird in the family Podargidae. It is sometimes considered conspecific with the Blyth's and Palawan frogmouths. Found in Southeast Asia, Indonesia and the Philippines, it lives in subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest.
The Sumatran frogmouth, also known as the short-tailed frogmouth and the pale-faced frogmouth, is a nocturnal bird belonging to the family Podargidae. It is endemic to the island of Sumatra in Indonesia.
The marbled frogmouth is a bird in the family Podargidae. The species was first described by Jean René Constant Quoy and Joseph Paul Gaimard in 1830. It is found in the Aru Islands, New Guinea and Queensland. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest and subtropical or tropical moist montane forest.
Podargus is a small genus of birds in the frogmouth family, Podargidae. All members of this genus are found in Australia, with some species being found in Papua New Guinea, Indonesia, and the Solomon Islands, as well.
It contains these species to date:
The Papuan frogmouth is a species of bird in the family Podargidae.
Apodimorphae is a clade of strisorean birds that include the extant families Trochilidae (hummingbirds), Hemiprocnidae (treeswifts), Apodidae (swifts), and Aegothelidae (owlet-nightjars), as well as many fossil families. This grouping of birds has been supported in a variety of recent studies. There are two higher classification schemes that have been proposed for the apodimorph families. One is all strisorean birds are classified in the order Caprimulgiformes, while the other is the strisorean birds are split into several distinct orders. In this case Apodimorphae is a subclade of Strisores that includes the orders Aegotheliformes and the Apodiformes. A similar name for the group Daedalornithes has been used for the owlet-night-apodiform clade, there is a difference between the two names with Apodimorphae defined as the total-group and Daedalornithes defined as the crown group.
Strisores, sometimes called nightbirds, is a clade of birds that includes the living families and orders Caprimulgidae, Nyctibiidae (potoos), Steatornithidae (oilbirds), Podargidae (frogmouths), Apodiformes, as well as the Aegotheliformes (owlet-nightjars) whose distinctness was only recently realized. The Apodiformes and the Aegotheliformes form the Daedalornithes.
Vanescaves is a probable clade of strisorean birds that include the clades Steatornithiformes, Nyctibiiformes, Podargiformes (frogmouths), and Apodimorphae. Some molecular studies do support the grouping of these birds, others offer conflicting positions of the non-apodimorphaean strisoreans. In 2019 the authors Chen et al. performed a combined analysis using 2289 ultra-conserved elements [UCEs], 117 morphological characters from extant and fossil taxa found support in this clade. The authors then proposed to name this group, which its meaning is Latin for "vanish birds" in reference to the disparate nature of their geographic distribution, as well as to the poem "A Route of Evanescence" by the American poet Emily Dickinson which features a hummingbird as the main subject. In 2020 Chen & Field named the two major subclades of this group, with Sedentaves and Letornithes for their crown-groups.
| Authority control databases: National |
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