Pennant-winged Nightjar Caprimulgus vexillarius Scientific name definitions

One of two sub-Saharan nightjars formerly placed in the genus Macrodipteryx, the male Pennant-winged Nightjar and the same sex of its close relative, the Standard-winged Nightjar (C. longipennis), are arguably the most spectacular caprimulgids on the African continent. This species takes its name from the extraordinarily long, and largely white, second to outermost primaries in breeding males, which are shown to great advantage in courtship display, being vibrated over a responsive female. The Pennant-winged Nightjar is an intra-African migrant. It breeds in southern Africa, between northeast South Africa and southern Tanzania, and west to Angola and northeast Namibia; and spends the non-breeding season mainly north of the Congo Basin, from southeast Nigeria in the west to Kenya in the east, although vagrants have reached as far afield as The Gambia and southern Somalia. However, there is no evidence for occurrence either on Socotra, off the Horn of Africa, or in Sierra Leone, both of which at one time or another have been proposed as the species’ type locality. Reference to a 19th-century record on Mauritius also seems fanciful, although there is a recent documented record of a male with full pennants at sea more than 1,500 km off the coast of Angola, meaning that perhaps nothing should be taken for granted.