All species › Nightjars › Nightjars › Pauraque
Pauraque | Nyctidromus albicollis
Pauraque | Chotacabras pauraque
The Pauraque is the nightjar most often seen on Trinidad: in the evening it sits on dirt roads and tracks, where its eyes shine orange-red in car headlights. It is more terrestrial than most nightjars, sometimes walking or running rather than flying. The name comes from its call.
Voice
The song is a whistled pur-weeeer, often preceded by a few short puk notes; it is repeated endlessly at dusk and through the night, especially in the dry season and early breeding season. Also soft wick calls in flight.
Recording: Jonas Nilsson — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
22–28 cm, with a long, rounded tail and fairly short, rounded wings. Plumage marbled grey-brown or rufous-brown, with a row of black, buff-edged spots on the scapulars and a rufous ear patch. A white band crosses the throat. The male has a broad white band across the primaries and largely white outer tail feathers. In the female the wing band is narrower and buffier and there is much less white in the tail. In flight the white band near the wing tip is visible.
Confusion species
Rufous Nightjar Antrostomus rufus is more uniformly reddish brown, lacks the white wing band and has a shorter tail. White-tailed Nightjar Hydropsalis cayennensis is smaller and shorter-bodied; the male has a white collar and much white in the tail. Common Nighthawk Chordeiles minor and its relatives have pointed wings with a white bar midway along the wing and hunt high in the air. Short-tailed Nighthawk Lurocalis semitorquatus is dark, short-tailed and lacks white.
Habitat
Semi-open country: forest edges, open and dry woodland, scrub, bushy pasture, plantations and field margins, where dense vegetation gives cover by day and open ground serves for hunting at night. It catches moths, beetles and other insects in short jumps or sallies from the ground. The eggs are laid without a nest on bare soil or leaf litter.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In the Caribbean only on Trinidad, where it is common in the lowlands and foothills. It is absent from Tobago. Outside the region from southern Texas through Mexico and Central America to northern Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Driving slowly along country lanes and forest tracks after dark, for example around the Aripo Savannah and the edges of the Northern Range, often turns up birds sitting on the road. The eyeshine in a torch beam gives them away; by day they are rarely found.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species adapts to farmland and secondary growth. Birds on roads are regularly killed by traffic.
Scientific name
Nyctidromus albicollis | (Gmelin, 1789)
Gmelin described the species in 1789 as Caprimulgus albicollis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Nyctidromus was introduced in 1838 by Gould. Nyctidromus is Greek, from nux, nuktos 'night' and dromos 'runner': 'night-runner', after its habit of running about on tracks and open ground at night. albicollis is Latin, from albus 'white' and collum 'neck', after the white throat band. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.