Abstract:During May to August in 2008 and 2018, we studied the basic breeding ecology of the Eurasian Nightjar in the basin of the Toutun River near Urumqi through field investigation, measurement and infrared cameras monitoring, and found the nest moving behavior of the bird. Altogether we found 7 nests of the nightjars, which were located on the sloping sands of the riverbanks with sparse vegetation. The nearest distance between nests is 69 m, and a density is 3﹣7 nests per square kilometer. Clutch size is 2 eggs (n = 7), with egg mass of 7.27 ± 0.38 g, egg length and width of 30.53 ± 0.88 mm and 21.39 ± 0.85 mm and egg volume of 7.13 ± 0.50 cm3 (n = 5, Table 1). Three nests were monitored by infrared cameras for15 days, 23 days and 11 days respectively, with a total of 8 462 photos, 4 152 video clips about 40 hours, and 6 807 valid photos acquired. We systematically investigated and analyzed incubation, nestling feeding, nestling growth of the nightjars. During the incubation period which lasted for about 15﹣16 days, the adults were leaving nests for feeding in a bimodal pattern, with peaks occurred at 20:00 to 21:00 and 03:00 to 04:00 respectively (Fig. 1). The nesting period lasted about 16﹣18 days. There was a significant difference in activity intensity between nestling feeding and incubation period. The adults fed young birds also in bimodal way, however, the peaks were occurred from 20:30 to 22:30 at night and before dawn at 02:30 to 04:30 (Fig. 2). The breeding behavioral spectrums were classified into 9 categories including 46 behaviors for parents, and 6 categories including 32 behaviors for nestlings. Their growth changes in body length, weight and wing followed a logistic growth curve, however, for the tail length, tarsus and rostra it followed a linear increase (Fig. 3, Table 2 and Table 3). We found the unique nest moving behavior of the Eurasian Nightjar with the moving distances and details shown in Table 4, for the reasons of moving the nests, we suggest that one was to prevent the young birds from being burned by the sun, and the others were to avoid disturbances (natural enemies, herds, floods, human activities, etc.).