Indian nightjar
species of bird
The Indian nightjar (Caprimulgus asiaticus) is a small nightjar which is a resident breeder in open lands across South Asia and Southeast Asia. Like most nightjars it is crepuscular and is best detected from its characteristic calls at dawn and dusk that have been likened to a stone skipping on a frozen lake - a series of clicks that become shorter and more rapid. They are sometimes spotted on roads when their eyes gleam red in the spotlight of a vehicle. There is considerable plumage variation across its range and can be hard to differentiate from other nightjars in the region especially in the field.
Description
This nightjar is small and short-tailed with white corners to the tail, a golden nape and collar, dark cheeks and white patches on the sides of the throat. The crown is grey and the breast is finely barred in brown. The males have more white on the tail while the female is more heavily streaked on the crown. It is differentiated from Sykes's nightjar by the dark undertail and from Jerdon's nightjar by the shorter tail and white patches on the sides of the throat.
The call is distinctive and has been likened to a stone skipped on a frozen lake (due to which it was also called the "ice-bird" in colonial India) or a ping-pong ball bouncing rapidly and coming to rest.
It flies after sundown with an easy, silent moth-like flight.
“Indian nightjar” enters the record as species of bird. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Indian, nightjar and species can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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“Indian nightjar” is worth following because a concise public description often conceals a longer documentary argument. Here, Indian, nightjar and species provides the most credible route into that argument.
Datasets, specimens, observations and peer-reviewed methods provide the appropriate test for the technical claims summarized here. The source revision retrieved here is dated Apr 8, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1151175. None of the 0 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
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This entry incorporates text from “Indian nightjar” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.