[Note by JAC: Matthew’s addiction to photos of cryptic nightjars is becoming a serious problem for him, and I’ve advised him to get professional help for the anxiety he experiences when trying to spot the damn birds. However, his doctors have advised me that, until he’s cured, I should humor him by allowing him to keep posting these photos. The second one is the hard one.]
by Matthew Cobb
More nightjar camouflage goodies from @SensoryEcology. First, you should all be able to spot the fiery-necked nightjar mum and chicks (the caption says ‘chicks’. I can only see the obvious one) in this pic:
If the second chick in that pic is hard to spot, what about this one [JAC: a chick], sitting on the ground somewhere?
I think I see it, but this one looks younger.
I think Nightjars should be renamed “Land Octopus”
Actually, it’s a little-known fact that every purported nightjar photographed to date has, instead, actually been a mimic octopus.
Cheers,
b&
Figure 1: second one is behind the mom, kinda top left?
I think you’re right, and one sees only a part of its back, the rest being hidden by the mother and therefore not visible.
I have a weird problem with the nightjar pictures. The pictures do not show up when I use Chrome as my browser. They render just fine in IE and Firefox. But not Chrome. This has happened before. Just the nightjars. The pics in the previous posts – the robin and snowman, are fine.
That is weird. The pictures render for me on Chrome just fine. Not that this makes finding the nightjars any easier.
I just checked the page source – the link to the nightjar pic is a secure link. i.e. https – “https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bfn6hodCQAAIy4w.jpg:large”.
Not the others, the robin for example –
“http://whyevolutionistrue.files.wordpress.com/2014/02/image.jpeg?w=957&h=957”
Not sure why this makes a difference in Chrome. It is my primary browser but seems to have some weird quirks – and difficulty with video.
Images that are pulled across/copied and pasted from other windows (like the nightjars) sometimes don’t render properly. When images have been uploaded as files to the WEIT WP site and then inserted as jpegs, there’s no problem. Sorry.
Google arbitrarily denies me access to certain of their services because I refuse to make a “new account” with them (because they are evil). Their latest salvo was to inactivate my ability to engage in “maps labs” functions. Dunno if this is relevant to this situation or not, cuz obviously I’m not gonna use Chrome, given my antipathy.
“I’ve advised him to get professional help for the anxiety he experiences when trying to spot the damn birds.”
The anxiety _he_ experiences? What about Poor Us???
11/18 across from the left-hand side, then 1/6 down from top edge (there’s an odd 4-sided figure made by whitish sticks, to the right of the brown stick that runs upwards right to left at an angle of 135°), with one of those white sticks going across the head of the chick?
Gosh, has Matt not played battleships and so would know how much easier it is with Cartesian coords???
Also, if they are so good at hiding, how come the earth is not carpeted with them?
People tread on them, obvs!
As you know we have some areas with very few humans.
I think that is why Charles D. on his visit downunder speculated that the hopping locomotion was in fact a hunting strategy?
I think I see the same one…If you drew a hypotenuse through the two yellow rocks, the right sngle sort of formed by the two white sticks down and to the right would show you the chick.
I have no idea of your coords. But I see the chick to the right of center. There are 4 tufts of grass that make a square-ish pattern. The grey downy chick is between the top two tufts, with its beak pointing to the upper right.
Poor chick in the bottom photo has no camouflage on that burned ground, and its fuzziness draws the eye immediately.
Right in the middle there’s something that looks like the face of a c*t, which I suspect is somehow a nightjar chick.
It really doesn’t matter where the chick is, since I’m not hungry and it probably wouldn’t be more than a mouthful anyhow.
As for the 1st picture, are those nightjar turds on the leaves? If so, then even their poop would be camouflaged!
Don’t ste… too late!
Yikes. It was right in the middle, before the shadow head camera man squished it.
I am really glad I am not the kind of animal whose calories depend on spotting nightjars.
I love these posts! Agree with those who’ve said the 2nd chick in the first photo shows just over the top of the mother’s folded wing feathers, and the chick in the bottom pic is probably that amorphous downy area in the center of the photo. (Notice how many of the camouflage views that are posted are not exactly the crispest photos for zooming in on?)
The photographer seems to have a curiously small foot! (Just left of his shadow).
In the second pic, what if he were having us on and there is no nightjar there at all?!