The Tawny Frogmouth

While in the King's Park, a fellow was all excited, he'd found a Tawny Frogmouth. Now, this is something to get excited about. This is a nocturnal bird related to the nightjar. In fact, he'd found three of them!

Above you see the backside of one of them sitting in the crotch of a tree. But it gets better.



One of the birds (apparently the male sits on the nest in the daytime) was nesting. It is difficult to tell from this angle exactly what you are looking at. The indents are not the eyes, however. The frogmouth has small feathers around his beak and you see this on the left hand side.

The other two birds were in a spot made for photography. Here, you can see the yellow eyes and the camouflage feathers.

Now you can see where the name comes from: the wide beak. When we first came to Australia, we went to the natural history museum in Brisbane and the best they could do was a skeleton of one of these fellows. I never imagined that we'd actually get to see one. I am amazed that we saw three just sitting in the tree posing for us.

Even when he turned to look at me, he didn't really care. He just continued to pose for the camera.

Not what you'd call a handsome bird, but he is certainly interesting.

Part of the daytime routine is to pose like a tree limb. If you were not looking at the location where you knew the bird was sitting, you'd never see him. The combination is pretty darned hard to see.

Seeing this amazing bird was a real treat. I never imagined that I'd see one outside a zoo.