The red-necked nightjar (Caprimulgus ruficollis) is the largest of the nightjars occurring in Europe. It breeds in Iberia and North Africa, and winters in tropical West Africa.
Taxonomy
Caprimulgus is derived from the Latin capra, "nanny goat", and mulgere, "to milk", referring to an old myth that nightjars suck milk from goats. The specific ruficollis is from Latin rufus, "red", and collum, "neck".
The common name "nightjar", first recorded in 1630, refers to the nocturnal habits of the bird, the second part of the name deriving from the distinctive churring song.
There are two subspecies: nominate ruficollis, breeding in Iberia, and desertorum breeding in North Africa. The North African form desertorum is paler than the Iberian one, and has different patterning on the base of its primary feathers: dark and orange bands of approximately equal width, compared to the narrower orange bands and greater extent of black of ruficollis. and in Denmark in 1991. The Northumberland bird was shot at Killingworth on 5 October by a gamekeeper, and the specimen purchased by John Hancock. In 2006, Keith Vinicombe and Dominic Mitchell cast doubt on the British record, believing that the lack of detail around the circumstances of finding indicated that a mistake or fraud could not be ruled out. The British Ornithologists' Union Records Committee subsequently re-examined the record and came to the conclusion that it should continue to be regarded as acceptable. The British record is a first-autumn bird of the Iberian race ruficollis, and the Danish record also appears to be of this form; earlier suggestions that the British bird was of the North African race desertorum were erroneous – the specimen's paleness being due to fading whilst on public display at the Hancock Museum. There are also several nineteenth-century European records from outside the species' normal breeding range: from southeast France, Malta, the Canary Islands, Croatia, Israel and Sicily.