Seeing elephants

Those of you who saw a pachyderm in my doorway picture in yesterday's post need to go look again. cottonmanifesto posted her picture of that wall (from some time ago) which shows the painting head-on, making the animal rather easier to identify.

Daily Zoo Animal: #23, Tawny Frogmouth

Tawny frogmouth Podargus strigoides

The keeper opened the back door of the exhibit, and I poked my head in. I looked around, but didn't see the bird anywhere. The keeper started laughing, I didn't know why at first, and then I saw it: the tawny frogmouth was about three feet away from me. I'd missed it entirely due to it's excellent camouflage, and only saw it when it flashed its bright owllike eyes at me.

Tawny frogmouths are nocturnal, and spend the daytime perched out in the open looking exactly like a broken off tree limb. At night they hunt on the ground for creeping prey: large insects and small vertebrates. Their closest relatives are nightjars and nighthawks, small night-flying birds that catch insects in flight in their wide gaping bills.

I'm reminded of the kookaburra, a similarly squat and bulky relative of the kingfishers that, instead of diving into water to catch fish and crustaceans, catches insects and lizards on land. The kookaburra and the frogmouth are both native to Australia. Perhaps because of Australia's relative isolation the ancestors of the frogmouth and kookaburra were able to radiate into their niches, which on other continents would be taken by other birds.

On this day in 365 Urban Species: Tansy.