Order
Caprimulgiformes
Family
Caprimulgidae
Genus
Setopagis
 
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Version 1.0

This is a historic version of this account.  Current version

SPECIES

Little Nightjar Setopagis parvula

Kaiya Provost
Version: 1.0 — Published April 17, 2015

Breeding

Introduction

There is little information on the breeding biology of Little Nightjar. Breeding is reported from August in Bolivia (Brace and Hornbuckle 1998); in September-October in central Brazil (Fry 1970, Melo et al. 2000, Marini et al. 2012); in November in southern Brazil (Belton 1984) and in Uruguay (Gore and Gepp 1978). In Argentina nests are reported from October-January (Friedmann 1927, Baliño 1984, de la Peña 1987).

The eggs are placed on the ground; the clutch is two (de la Peña 1987, Belton 1984, Melo et al. 2000). The eggs are described as ochre with gray spots (de la Peña 1987) and as pinkish cream with reddish brown scrawls (Marini et al. 2012), and measure 26 mm x 21 mm (de la Peña 1987, Marini et al. 2012). Both sexes incubate. At one nest, initially the male incubated during the day and the female at night; but the male abandoned the nest before the eggs hatched, and from that point on the female incubated during both day and night (Melo et al. 2000). The incubation period is at least 17 days, and the nestling period is ca 14-16 days (Marini et al. 2012).

Friedmann (1927) reported that it is known that in Little Nightjar the left testis is larger than the right in breeding males, although he did not indicate the sample size on which this is based. Testis asymmetry is widespread in birds, although its significance still is not understood (Calhim and Montgomerie 2015).

Recommended Citation

Provost, K. (2015). Little Nightjar (Setopagis parvula), version 1.0. In Neotropical Birds Online (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/nb.litnig1.01