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Buff-collared Nightjar Life History

Habitat

Open Woodlands

Buff-collared Nightjars often occur in canyons, desert washes, and other dry habitats with dense shrubs and short trees. They also inhabit deciduous forest and moist pine-oak woodlands. In Arizona, this species is typically found in desert canyons at lower elevations, but in the main part of their range in Mexico, they breed up to 3,000 meters (9,800 feet) elevation.

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Food

Insects

Buff-collared Nightjars feed on nocturnal flying insects such as moths and beetles. During the breeding season, they hunt like pewees—sitting on an elevated perch, sallying out in a 5–10 second long flight to catch an insect, and then returning to the same perch. Breeding birds forage like this for several hours after sunset, and again in the hour before dawn. In limited observations from Colima and Jalisco, Mexico, during the nonbreeding season, this species foraged almost entirely from the ground, just after dusk and right before dawn.

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Nesting

Nest Placement

Ground

Little information available, but in Morelos, Mexico, reported to place eggs under vegetation in dense brush.

Nest Description

Buff-collared Nightjars do not build a nest, instead laying their eggs directly on the ground.

Nesting Facts

Clutch Size:2 eggs
Egg Description:

Buffy with lilac and brown splotches.

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Behavior

Flycatching

Buff-collared Nightjars spend the day roosting on the ground, typically under small bushes on hillsides, with their head pointed downslope. They forage during the night and are most active at dawn and dusk. Breeding birds in southeastern Arizona sing and forage from perches 1–2.5 meters (3–8 feet) off the ground, but nonbreeding birds observed in Mexico make foraging flights almost exclusively from the ground. When foraging, Buff-collared Nightjars often fly steeply upward in pursuit of flying insects; they also fly adeptly through shrubs and short trees with rapid changes of direction.

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Conservation

Low Concern

Partners in Flight estimates Buff-collared Nightjar’s global breeding population at 2,000,000 individuals and rates the species a 12 out of 20 on the Continental Concern Score, indicating a species of fairly low conservation concern.

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Credits

Bowers Jr., R. K. and J. B., Jr. Dunning (2020). Buff-collared Nightjar (Antrostomus ridgwayi), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (S. M. Billerman, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.bucnig.01

Cleere, N. (1998) Nightjars: a guide to nightjars, nighthawks, and their relatives. Yale University Press, New Haven, Connecticut.

Dunne, P. (2006). Pete Dunne's essential field guide companion. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, New York, USA.

Holyoak, D. T. (2001). Nightjars and Their Allies: The Caprimulgiformes. Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.

Howell, S. N. G., and S. Webb (1995). A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America. Oxford University Press, Oxford, United Kingdom.

Partners in Flight (2023). Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2023.

Sibley, D. A. (2014). The Sibley Guide to Birds, second edition. Alfred A. Knopf, New York, NY, USA.

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