Aerial athletes and unsung hunters by night, tawny frogmouths are more than just their Muppet looks

‘In 10 minutes, the parents hunted and fed their offspring five times each – an extraordinary effort’ … Debbie Lustig. Photograph: Imagevixen/Getty Images/RooM RF

What’s not to love about a Muppet in a long coat with spooky eyes like something out of a Scooby Doo cartoon? Posing as tree stumps on a branch, tawny frogmouths almost parody themselves.

But there’s much more to them than that. Frogmouths have another life that few people see: like vampires, they wake at sunset and night-hunt until dawn. These stolid creatures turn into zephyrs that silently swoop, catching prey on the ground and in the air.