(1) We even visited the walkway at night with the good fortune of looking down on one of the rarest birds of our trip, a brown nightjar , a not too distant relative of our whippoorwill, but a very rare and little-known bird.(2) My encounters with that mysterious bird, the nightjar , have been few and are perhaps the more memorable for that.(3) Birds such as grouse, crows, quail, partridge, nightjars , cuckoos, shrikes, larks, pipits, merlins, harriers, kestrels and buzzards would all have been seen.(4) The classification we use recognizes three distinct orders for owls, falcons, and nightjars .(5) The nocturnal owls, nightjars , and allies often are poorly known, and very few species have been studied in detail.