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Mindaugas Mitkus
While most mammals are primarily nocturnal, there are only two groups of birds that have adopted a nocturnal way of living. In many cultures the word “owl” would immediately bring thoughts about night and someone staring at you from the darkness. However, owls are also well known for their top level hearing. And in fact, they rely on auditory cues more then spotting the scratching mouse under dense vegetation or deep layer of snow.
Another group of nocturnal birds, nightjars and their allies (order Caprimulgiformes), is much less known and has attracted much less attention from scientists or birdwatchers. However, nightjars are the only nocturnal insectivorous birds catching fast moving prey on the wing. There is no evidence of hearing or echolocation being used to locate the prey, but possession of large eyes implies that vision is used to guide feeding behaviour in caprimulgids.
There are two hunting techniques employed by those birds. The “hawking” – where the bird catches prey in continuous flight and “sallying” – where the bird flies upwards from the ground or a perch to catch each item of prey separately. The later technique is slightly different in some species of frogmouths as they sally to the ground from a low perch to collect insects on tree trunks or leafy branches. Frogmouths, owlet-nightjars and potoos always feed by sallying. Nightjars use both techniques but aremost often restricted to a single one. “Hawking species” can switch to sallying when prey is very scarce or night is moonless, but “sallying species” usually just sally. However, there are species exploiting both strategies equally often.
The aim of my project is to describe the properties of their visual systems which allow those birds to hunt small, fast moving prey in dim light conditions and compare them between groups using different hunting techniques.
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Publisher: Department of Biology
Last modified 19 Dec 2011
Mindaugas Mitkus
Ph.D. student
Functional zoology
Phone:
+46 46-2227802
E-mail:
Mindaugas.Mitkus@biol.lu.se
