Podargidae Frogmouths
Version: 1.0 — Published March 4, 2020
Introduction
The burly brutes of the caprimulgiforms, frogmouths are much less aerial than most of their relatives. Cryptically colored, they sit quietly by day, often tamely revisiting the same perch for many days at a time, despite visits from human observers. At night, they wait watchfully for passing prey, then pounce on it, subduing it on the ground or a tree trunk. With their massive—though fairly light—bill, they consume just about any animal they can swallow. This family includes two subfamilies divided neatly by Wallace’s Line, the birds in Asia being lighter of build, more diverse, much harder to find, and thus less well known, than their cousins in Australia and New Guinea.
Habitat
Most podargid species live in forested habitats, but some make it into more open habitats, such as second growth and wooded savanna.
Diet and Foraging
The frogmouths feed primarily on insects, particularly beetles, grasshoppers, and moths. The larger species will also feed on small vertebrates, such as small rodents and lizards. Frogmouths are nocturnal, and typically hunt by flying from tree to tree and pouncing on their prey on the ground. Larger items are beaten against a hard surface before swallowing them.
Breeding
The frogmouths are monogamous with biparental care. Detailed information on the breeding biology of this family as a whole, however, is lacking, especially in the genus Batrachostomus, and much of what we know comes from studies of the Tawny Frogmouth Podargus strigoides. The nests of the podargids are simple structures. Podargus species construct a mass of sticks in a basic cup, or in a platform nest on a branch or in the upward fork of a branch. Asian frogmouth nests are smaller, consisting of a shallow cup of bark, down, spiderwebs, and lichen built on a horizontal branch. Frogmouths typically lay 1 to 3 eggs, and rarely 5. Both male and female frogmouths participate in nest construction, incubation, brooding, and feeding the chicks. Incubation takes about a month. Frogmouth chicks are brooded by a parent for up to three weeks after hatching, and they leave the nest after about a month.
Conservation Status
Extensive habitat loss, especially in lowland forests, is probably responsible for the declines of six frogmouths (43%), all in the genus Batrachostomus (6 NT).
Systematics History
Podargidae is clearly included in Caprimulgiformes, but like many other families in this group, its placement within the order is not well resolved. Recent studies have alternatively placed frogmouths as sister to nightjars (Barrowclough et al. 2006, Han 2006); as sister to a larger clade containing nightjars, swifts, hummingbirds, and owlet-nightjars (Hackett et al. 2008); as sister to a clade including the potoos and Oilbird (Han et al. 2010); or as sister to all caprimulgiforms except Oilbird (Mayr 2011). We provisionally accept here the placement suggested by Hackett et al. (2008). At times the Podargus species of Australo-Papua have been split as a separate family from the Batrachostomus species of Asia, but recent studies (Barrowclough et al. 2006, Ericson et al. 2006a, Livezey & Zusi 2007, Hackett et al. 2008, Braun & Huddleston 2009, Han et al. 2010) reinforce the sister relationship between them and we have opted, as have others (Cracraft 2013, Clements et al. 2014), to keep them together in one family for now.
Conservation Status
Least Concern |
62.5%
|
---|---|
Near Threatened |
12.5%
|
Vulnerable |
6.2%
|
Endangered |
0%
|
Critically Endangered |
0%
|
Extinct in the Wild |
0%
|
Extinct |
0%
|
Not Evaluated |
0%
|
Data Deficient |
0%
|
Unknown |
18.8%
|
Data provided by IUCN (2023) Red List. More information