Jungle Nightjar (Caprimulgus indicus)

Jungle Nightjar sitting on dry leaves in Panna National Park, Madhya Pradesh, India.

The Jungle Nightjar (Caprimulgus indicus) is a species of nightjar found in India and Sri Lanka. It is found mainly on the edge of forests where it is seen or heard at dusk. The taxonomy of this and related nightjars is complex and a range of treatments have been followed that cover this and several other nightjars in the Asian region. It was formerly called the Grey Nightjar or Indian Jungle Nightjar and sometimes included the East Asian Grey Nightjar (C. jotaka) as a subspecies.

The Jungle Nightjar is about 21--24 cm long with the Sri Lankan population (ssp. kelaarti) being smaller. Mostly grey with black streaks on the crown, it lacks a conspicuous wing patch which is rufous. The tail is greyish with well separated narrow black bars. The male has a white throat patch that is broken at the middle. The female has a rufous throat patch and submoustachial streaks. The usual call is a series of thacoo or chuck notes like a distant engine. The song is a slow and regular, series of FWik-m notes, repeated for as long as 10 seconds. This sometimes ends in quick whistling foo-foo with the quality of sounds obtained when air is blown over an open bottle. A call described as uk-krukroo attributed to this species by Ali and Ripley in their Handbook is in error and is the call of the Oriental Scops Owl (Otus sunia).

Panna National Park is a national park located in Panna and Chhatarpur districts of Madhya Pradesh in India. It has an area of 542.67 km2 (209.53 sq mi). It was declared in 1994 as the twenty second Tiger reserve of India and the fifth in Madhya Pradesh, Panna was given the Award of Excellence in 2007 as the best maintained national park of India by the Ministry of Tourism of India. It is notable that by 2009, the entire tiger population had been eliminated by poaching with the collusion of forest department officials.

Panna National Park and the surrounding territorial forest area of North and South Panna forest division is the only large chunk of wildlife habitat remaining in North Madhya Pradesh in the otherwise fragmented forest landscape of the region.

The National Park is situated at a point where the continuity of the Tropical and subtropical dry broad-leaf forests belt, which starts from Cape Comorin in South India, is broken and beyond this the Upper Gangetic Plains moist deciduous forests of the great Indo-Gangetic Plain begins. This area is the northernmost tip of the natural teak forests and the easternmost tip of the natural 'Kardhai' Anogeissus pendula forests.

The forests of Panna National Park along with Ken Gharial Wildlife Sanctuary and adjoining territorial divisions form a significant part of the catchment area of the 406 km (252 mi) Ken River which runs northeast for about 72 km (45 mi) through the park.

Source : Wikipedia

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