Pennant Nightjar: Transformation into a "fairy". The bird's feathers suddenly lengthen by 50 cm! (7 photos)

Celebrities periodically make scandals when someone somewhere doesn’t recognize them and they are sincerely offended by this. How can anyone recognize you, dear, without a stage costume and a spotlight aimed at the right place? It’s the same thing with a simple African guy, the pennant nightjar: outside the mating season, no one pays attention to him.





Some gray-brown bird is flying around here, eating annoying midges - so many people do that. Everything changes in spring, when the heart wants to love. The four outer flight feathers on both wings grow sharply.



A small bird, barely 25 centimeters in length, acquires black and white pennants that lengthen the nightjar’s silhouette to 80 centimeters! This is where the bird stands out from the crowd of identical winged birds. Well, if you can see in the dark, animals only become active when it gets dark.





The second name for nightjars is four-winged. At certain angles, their pennants resemble a second pair of wings.

On these quiet spring nights, ornithologists of varying degrees of professionalism arm themselves with cameras and film any movement of the pennant nightjar. This does not bother our hero; during the marriage season he is only interested in the attention of the opposite sex. These feathered guys are always faithful to their other half, but marriages do not last longer than 1 season. This time is enough to teach intelligence and place from one to four chicks on the wing.



However, we got ahead of ourselves, first the birds build nests where children will spend time in warmth and safety. In theory. Nightjars do not favor architecture and construction. Even sizari with their urban minimalism - three sticks in six rows - are just a nest-building guru compared to them. For where the whippoorwill carcass flopped onto the ground, there, consider it, is the nest. The main thing is to hammer the eggs into the ground harder for greater camouflage.



But rely on camouflage, but don’t make a mistake yourself. Yes, the eggs are relatively well hidden, and the motley birds are almost invisible on the ground, but there is no reason for the animals to sit for a long time. Their chicks are born sighted, fluffy and quite active. They have only a few months to grow and improve their flight skills, after which birds of all ages go on a winter tour of Africa, their homeland.



Pennant nightjars have to overcome half of the dark continent and reach the Republic of Ghana.

Our feathered friends will return to South Africa in time for next spring. Everything will go anew: feathers, searching for a mate, caring for the younger generation. At this pace they spend the five-year period allotted to them by Mother Nature.



In his 5 years, he manages to rock out in a way that many people don’t rock out in their entire lives.

What does this story teach us? Sometimes, to attract the opposite sex (and ornithologists), it is enough to change one small detail about yourself. Lengthen by 50 centimeters, for example...