During the Rincon Day celebrations, I got an early start by following the runners on their 17 km race from the stadium in Kralendijk to Rincon.  Afterward, I decided to visit a few of my favorite nature sites in the area.  Following the paved road to Washington/Slagbai Park, I stopped and birded the large,  fresh water pond and found that most of the waterfowl and shorebirds were nesting.  I found young, floating along with the adults of Pied-billed Grebe, Caribbean Coot, and the incessant alarm calls of Black-necked Stilts indicated nesting along the shoreline.

 Continuing interior along the kunuku roads, I stopped to examine a termite mound along side the road that had the potential of being Caribbean Parakeet nest site.  As I examined the termitary, a large almost moth-like bird flew feebly up from under my feet, and landed rather heavily  10 feet away and looked  injured.  It walked across the road almost dragging a wing and disappeared in the cactus and shrubbery.  It was a female White-tailed Nightjar.  I spent a few minutes trying to relocate her, and then remembered why birds appear to be injured when they are disturbed.  They are on their nests and attempt to lead unsuspecting predators off on a goose-chase.  Sure enough, by back-tracking to where she had first flown up, I spotted 2 pinkish-brown eggs lying on the ground.  The ceremony of nest building was almost absent as there were no sticks, or grass stems or even feathers for the eggs to lay on.  I hid behind a mesquite bush  thirty feet away and within 10 minutes she was seen walking along the ground approaching the eggs, and begin to incubate them once again.  Such a remarkable bird, and more remarkable to find such a secretive species on its nest.

Local Bonaireans call this bird "palabrua", meaning "witch bird" because of the huge red glow that reflects from their eyes at night when a car headlight reveals them sitting or flying from the less traveled roads after dark.  I have taken interested birders to a place where they are assured of seeing them and their eerie eye shine at night and everyone is delighted to add this species to their life lists.  This bird's name harkens back to former times when many mysterious things, especially those that seemed to be most comfortably active on the darkest of nights, conjured up to local people visions of evil spirits out roaming the countryside.  Anyone who has seen them flying back and forth catching moths and other nocturnal, flying insects and catch that red gleam from their eyes can easily see how such stories could get started.  White-tailed Nightjars belong to a family of birds called Goatsuckers, and with their huge mouths were once suspected of stealing milk from livestock, except that their huge, gaping mouths that have conspicuous "whiskers" on the outside, are to capture their prey with, the flying, nocturnal insects.

Another rare species of bird here on Bonaire, that we have not documented nesting yet, is the Barn Owl.  During the nesting season it can make the most hideous screams and shrill cries that can only be heard in the dead of night, and they too are known as "parabrua" by Bonaireans.  People have reported seeing then sitting in  darkened cave entrances here on the island, and I have examined photographs of a Barn Owl, taken by Marcel Nahr, so they are more common than we suspect, but again very secretive, and to actually see one, staring back at you will definitely make you think you are looking into the face a ghost or evil spirit.  Prof Voous lists in his Birds of the Netherlands Antilles, published in 1983, that the only authentic record of a Barn Owl was a single feather found in a cave at Spelonk in 1951, so up until many recent sightings, they appear to have been much rarer fifty years ago.  I found a pellet of a Barn Owl with tiny mammal bones imbedded  in the indigestible matter that is actually bolted up out of the throat.  The tiny bones were bats, upon which the owl had been feeding because they eat almost entirely mammals that they capture at night, and the bats we have here may be the only mammals we have that have been

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