XIII, D, 6 Zimmer: Birds of Southern Palawan 339 



individuals were seen, but flocks were much more common. I 

 was able to get but a single specimen, a female, with bill much 

 less prominently developed than that possessed by the males. 



CAPRIMULGID^ 



Caprimulgus macrurus macrurus Horsfield. 



Nightjars were rather common at Brooke's Point where I 

 often heard them in the evening along the beach or in the nearby 

 clearings, uttering their weird "owk-owk," then after a little 

 pause, "owk-owk" again, and so on monotonously well into the 

 night, each call, perhaps, answered by other birds nearby. Oc- 

 casionally I flushed them at the edge of the forest during the 

 daytime and one specimen I took in a bamboo thicket along a 

 stream in more or less open country. In daylight they were 

 silent and stationary unless disturbed; only at night were they 

 really active. Sometimes when I was not busy after dark, I 

 would fasten a small acetylene searchlight to my hat and, armed 

 with gun and bag, would go out jack-lighting for these birds 

 and for other night wanderers of the forest. Guided by the 

 sound of the monotonous note of the nightjars I could get within 

 range of one of them before it took alarm, the light from the 

 lamp producing an answering gleam from the bird's large eye, 

 which would shine with a reddish glow in a single spot of fire 

 that formed an excellent target. At times, before I could shoot, 

 or if I continued to approach, the spot of flame would wink out 

 and in a moment or two I would hear the interrupted monotone 

 taken up at a different point and I would know that my bird had 

 moved to a safer distance. If the night were brilliantly moonlit 

 I might see the shadowy flutter of wings as the creature left its 

 post or might even see it resting wherever it might be. Once or 

 twice on such occasions I have thought, though I could never be 

 certain of it, that the nightjars were then not the horizontal, 

 crouching forms that they were in daytime, but that they sat 

 more alert, more erect. I know that they often forsook terres- 

 trial haunts, for I could see them perched on the tops of small 

 bushes about a meter above ground. 



I saw and collected birds only at Brooke's Point, but I heard 

 others, some of which were undoubtedly the same form as the 

 present one, at Candauaga and Tagbariri. Caprimulgus manil- 

 lensis and C. jotaka have both been collected in Palawan, but all 

 of my specimens are referable to C. macrurus and to the typical 

 variety of that species. 



