Tawny Frogmouth

• Range: The Tawny Frogmouth is found throughout Australia, including Tasmania.
  
• Habitat: It can be seen in almost any habitat type except the denser rainforests and treeless deserts.
  
• Description: Tawny frogmouths have wide, frog-like mouths, which they use to capture insects. They have large, horny, triangular, sharply hooked bills. Their legs are short and their feet small and weak. They are somewhat lethargic in their movements and are the weakest flyers in the order. Their rounded wings are only of moderate length. Frogmouths range in length from 9 to 21 inches. Their soft, silky plumage is marbled gray, patterned with cryptic streaks and bars. The sexes are colored alike or nearly so. Most species are dichromatic, meaning two colors, in this case ruddy brown and gray.
  
• Diet: Tawny frogmouths prey on beetles, centipedes, scorpions, caterpillars and occasionally mice. This ground feeder watches quietly from a convenient stump or branch until it spies its quarry and then flutters down on it.
  
• Behavior: During the day frogmouths sleep perched lengthwise on a branch with their heads up and their eyes closed. Their color so matches the branch that they look like part of it and are almost impossible to see. These birds are active after dusk and before dawn.
  Their nocturnal habits and their relative scarcity make them so difficult to study that comparatively little is known of their behavior. The tawny frogmouth's call is a grunt, which has a distinct nasal quality.
  
• Breeding: Tawny Frogmouths breed mainly from August to December, although birds in more arid areas may breed in response to heavy rains. Both sexes incubate the two or three eggs. The male sits during the day, but both sexes share sitting at night. The nest is a loose platform of sticks, which is usually placed on a horizontal forked tree branch. Normally only one brood is raised in a season, but birds from the south may have two.