Grey nightjar
species of bird
The grey nightjar (Caprimulgus jotaka; also "gray" in some non-local literature) is a species of nightjar found in East Asia, breeding from southeastern Russia south through China, the Korean Peninsula and Japan to northern Indochina and westward along the Himalayas. It is largely migratory, wintering in Indochina south to Java in Indonesia, but is resident in warmer areas in the south of its breeding range. It is sometimes treated as a subspecies of the jungle nightjar (C. indicus), its South Asian relative. The grey nightjar breeds and forages in early successional habitats surrounded by forests; its populations have declined since the 1970s in Japan. Like all nightjars, it is crepuscular to nocturnal, feeding on flying insects, including moths, beetles, flying ants, grasshoppers, and others.
Taxonomy
The species was formally described in 1845 by Coenraad Jacob Temminck and Hermann Schlegel with the binomial name Caprimulgus jotaka based on specimens collected in Japan. The specific epithet is the Japanese word for the species, Yo taka meaning "night hawk". The grey nightjar was subsequently included as a subspecies of the jungle nightjar (C. indicus; also called grey nightjar formerly) until Rasmussen and Anderton split them in 2005 by the distinguishable calls and egg coloration. Both grey and jungle nightjar can be differentiated from other relatives that occur in same habitats by their different patterns on the tail feathers.
Description
The grey nightjar is a medium-sized nightjar with a large head, large eye, long tail, weak bill and short legs.
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The date and method of observation matter as much as the stated conclusion, especially where classification or consensus has changed. The source revision retrieved here is dated Dec 27, 2025. The linked authority identifier is Q1440261. The Library of Congress control number is sh85020004. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference. The first chronological checks are 1845 and 2005.
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This entry incorporates text from “Grey 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.