Rufous nightjar
The rufous nightjar is a species of nightjar in the family Caprimulgidae.
It is found in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Saint Lucia, Suriname, Trinidad and Tobago, and Venezuela.
Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical dry forest, subtropical or tropical moist lowland forest, and heavily degraded former forest.Taxonomy
The rufous nightjar was described by the French polymath Georges-Louis Leclerc, Comte de Buffon in 1780 in his Histoire Naturelle des Oiseaux. The bird was also illustrated in a hand-coloured plate engraved by François-Nicolas Martinet in the Planches Enluminées D'Histoire Naturelle which was produced under the supervision of Edme-Louis Daubenton to accompany Buffon's text. Neither the plate caption nor Buffon's description included a scientific name but in 1783 the Dutch naturalist Pieter Boddaert coined the binomial name Caprimulgas rufus in his catalogue of the Planches Enluminées. The rufous nightjar is now placed in the genus Antrostomus that was erected by the French naturalist Charles Bonaparte in 1838. The generic name combines the Ancient Greek antron meaning "cavern" and stoma meaning "mouth". The specific epithet is Latin for "red".
Four subspecies are recognised:
- A. r. minimus – south Costa Rica to Colombia and Venezuela
- A. r. rufus – south Venezuela, the Guianas and north Brazil
- A. r. otiosus Bangs, 1911 – St. Lucia
- A. r. rutilus Burmeister, 1856 – south Brazil and east Bolivia to north Argentina
