• Welcome to BirdForum, the internet's largest birding community with thousands of members from all over the world. The forums are dedicated to wild birds, birding, binoculars and equipment and all that goes with it.

    Please register for an account to take part in the discussions in the forum, post your pictures in the gallery and more.
ZEISS DTI thermal imaging cameras. For more discoveries at night, and during the day.

bird found! Looks like a dragon! (1 Viewer)

It's a shame that bloke who went looking for them never returned.....'coz that thread was the funniest thing I've ever read on here! Delusional was an understatement!!
 
Proof, surely, of their man-eating existence.

PS - Why isn't the subject bird just a Whip-poor-will?

My impression was of a Chuck-wills-widow - they have enormouse gapes - but the video quality is so poor, it could well be otherwise...

What I can't get over is how much "traction" this video has ... this is the third time someone has brought it to my attention. The last time, someone sent me an email with a link, claiming it was a Rufous Potoo!

Peter
 
According to my Mexican field guide, potoos are not found near Monterrey. A potoo, a bird of the tropical lowlands, would be quite a find in the northern zone of Monterrey (mentioned as the site of the filming at the beginning of the video), which is in the foothills (at about 537 m/1760 ft altitude) of the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains not too far from the US-Mexico border. The bird strikes me as too dark to be a potoo.

Ah, I didn't pay enough attention to the location. I'll agree with nightjar then.
 
It would be appreciated if one of the experts would take a closer look at the bird.
The posture of the specimen in the video is very reminiscent of a potoo, but that would be a seriously lost bird. The video is not great, but seems adequate for an expert birder to develop an opinion.
 
I agree in part etudiant, when it has its mouth open in the vid it does indeed look very potoo like, however the last few frames, when it has been put in the cage it clearly is sitting spread out on the floor as you would expect from a Nightjar type bird, I suspect it just looks odd as it is in the hand, not where you usually see them!

Baphomet, it has feathers so it must be a bird.
 
i would appreciate a serious answer and not all this cynical crap. If you experts can give a serious answer it would help out a lot. Now i did get one answer and a link but the beak of the animal is all wrong. the feathers seem in the right area but overall its still incorrect. If you noticed the width of the mouth then you can tell that its a different bird unless of course its a baby bird, then again if it is a baby bird its freaking HUGE. I mean look at the mouth when it opens. it looks like a turtle
 
i would appreciate a serious answer and not all this cynical crap. If you experts can give a serious answer it would help out a lot. Now i did get one answer and a link but the beak of the animal is all wrong. the feathers seem in the right area but overall its still incorrect. If you noticed the width of the mouth then you can tell that its a different bird unless of course its a baby bird, then again if it is a baby bird its freaking HUGE. I mean look at the mouth when it opens. it looks like a turtle

Furstreak -

I can't speak for any other poster, but mine was perfectly serious (#23). Although the quality of the video is quite poor, it is quite adequate to determine that this bird is one of the nightjar/nighthawk, or caprimulgid, family - since Monterrey is out of the range of either of the Potoos (another, related, group of bird with really big gapes) it's down to birds like Whip-poor-will and Chuck-will's-widow.

A bander I know once showed a video of a captive "Chuck" in the hand, and when it opened its mouth it looked much like the bird in the video - downright scary! I have attached a link to an image of a Chuck-will's-widow that shows the gape, I think it does look a lot like the original bird.
http://whitefishpoint.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/cwwi-5-16-10.jpg

Cheers,
 
Good post Peter, best photo showing open mouthed appearance comparable with the video.
For the record Furstreak my first and last post were serious too, I think after peter's post you will agree that the BIRD is of the Nightjar family, either a Chuck wwd or Whip.
Thanks for posting the video, its quite eye opening and interesting to see familiar birds in unfamiliar surroundings
 
Furstreak, following up on my first post in this thread, I had said the bird might be a Common Poorwill completely off the top of my head. Having thought about some of the serious identifications proffered, I looked at my Mexican field guide (Howell and Webb).

Monterrey appears to be on the western edge of the range for either Chuck-wills-widow and (Northern) Whip-poor-will, which anyhow are or may be lowland species. Tawny-collared Nightjar and (Mexican) Whip-poor-will appear to be in range, as does Common Poorwill (which is probably too small and too light?). Tawny-collared is found up to about 500 meters, which may or may not rule it out for Monterrey (at about 537 meters).

I won't go into the habitats any further for these species except to say that Common Poorwill is a desert bird and I suspect that Monterrey doesn't have that kind of habitat. Paraque is not a serious contender, not the least because it is a sub-tropical lowland bird with a really long tail.

As for the mouth of the bird, nightjars have deceptively small bills which open up into huge gullets capable of swallowing sizable, intact, moths and beetles which are snapped up as the bird flies around. I would not consider the beak to be "all wrong" for a nightjar, poorwill, whip-poor-will, etc.
 
furstreak said:
i would appreciate a serious answer and not all this cynical crap. If you experts can give a serious answer it would help out a lot. Now i did get one answer and a link but the beak of the animal is all wrong. the feathers seem in the right area but overall its still incorrect. If you noticed the width of the mouth then you can tell that its a different bird unless of course its a baby bird, then again if it is a baby bird its freaking HUGE. I mean look at the mouth when it opens. it looks like a turtle
Microtus said:
I apologize for my non-serious posts in this thread.
I personally don't think there's any need for apologies. Pretty much everyone already said it was a type of caprimulgid. There's really no mystery about that being what it is. The rest of the posts were quite plainly jokes because the bird is quite plainly a caprimulgid. And as several people pointed out, the quality of the video is not adequate for a specific identity.
 
I wasn't joking when I suggested potoo- but I was mistaken. Checking the location and watching the video again, there is no doubt in my mind now that it is a nightjar.
 
I personally don't think there's any need for apologies. Pretty much everyone already said it was a type of caprimulgid. There's really no mystery about that being what it is. The rest of the posts were quite plainly jokes because the bird is quite plainly a caprimulgid. And as several people pointed out, the quality of the video is not adequate for a specific identity.

Agree. Also, the OP's thread title and initial post was clearly trying to put a sensationalistic spin on the bird--using two exclamation points as well as choosing the word "dragon". If you want to draw attention to a thread by making sensational claims, you shouldn't complain about some gentle ribbing when they don't pan out.

Best,
Jim
 
ovenbird43 said:
I wasn't joking when I suggested potoo- but I was mistaken. Checking the location and watching the video again, there is no doubt in my mind now that it is a nightjar.
potoo was a perfectly legitimate suggestion to make I think. A couple of people have noted how in the video it does in fact look very potoo-like when in the hand, which I think is down to the way it is being held, but as you say on a second viewing (especially the way it sits when placed in the carry-box) it is clearly a nightjar.
 
Warning! This thread is more than 14 years ago old.
It's likely that no further discussion is required, in which case we recommend starting a new thread. If however you feel your response is required you can still do so.

Users who are viewing this thread

Back
Top