Mees's nightjar (''Caprimulgus meesi'') is a member of the

nightjar Nightjars are medium-sized nocturnal or crepuscular birds in the family Caprimulgidae and order Caprimulgiformes, characterised by long wings, short legs, and very short bills. They are sometimes called goatsuckers, due to the ancient folk tal ...

family (Caprimulgidae) described as new to science in 2004. It is a representative of the

large-tailed nightjar The large-tailed nightjar (''Caprimulgus macrurus'') is a species of nightjar in the family Caprimulgidae. It is found along the southern Himalayan foothills, eastern South Asia, Southeast Asia and northern Australia. This species is a reside ...

complex found on

Flores Flores is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands, a group of islands in the eastern half of Indonesia. Including the Komodo Islands off its west coast (but excluding the Solor Archipelago to the east of Flores), the land area is 15,530.58 km2, and th ...

and

Sumba Sumba ( id, Pulau Sumba) is an island in eastern Indonesia. It is one of the Lesser Sunda Islands and is in the province of East Nusa Tenggara. Sumba has an area of , and the population was 779,049 at the 2020 Census; the official estimate as a ...

Indonesia Indonesia, officially the Republic of Indonesia, is a country in Southeast Asia and Oceania between the Indian and Pacific oceans. It consists of over 17,000 islands, including Sumatra, Java, Sulawesi, and parts of Borneo and New Guine ...

. Previously unrecognised as a separate taxon due to its lack of morphological distinctness, Sangster and Rozendaal (2004) described this new species on the basis of its vocalisations, which differ significantly from those of the large-tailed nightjar races resident on other islands in the

Lesser Sundas The Lesser Sunda Islands or nowadays known as Nusa Tenggara Islands ( id, Kepulauan Nusa Tenggara, formerly ) are an archipelago in Maritime Southeast Asia, north of Australia. Together with the Greater Sunda Islands to the west they make up ...

. The species is named after

Gerlof Mees Gerlof Fokko Mees (16 June 1926 – 31 March 2013) was a Dutch ichthyologist, ornithologist and museum curator. During 1946 to 1949 he took part as a conscript in the military actions to reestablish rule in the Dutch East Indies. During that time h ...

, former curator of the

Natural History Museum, Leiden Naturalis Biodiversity Center ( nl, Nederlands Centrum voor Biodiversiteit Naturalis) is a national museum of natural history and a research center on biodiversity in Leiden, Netherlands. It was named the European Museum of the Year 2021. Altho ...

References

* Sangster, G. and F. Rozendaal (2004
''Territorial songs and species-level taxonomy of nightjars of the ''Caprimulgus macrurus'' complex, with the description of a new species.''
Zoologische Verhandelingen (Leiden) Vol. 350 pp. 7–4
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Mees's nightjar Birds of Flores Birds of Sumba Mees's nightjar {{Caprimulgiformes-stub