When leading birding tours - https://calidrisbirdingtours.com/ - I am frequently asked if we are likely to see nocturnal birds; the difficulty in locating these birds and the scarcity of sightings make them much-wanted birds by most birders. After a long day of birding it takes quite some effort to stay out into darkness to look for nocturnal species and quite often the search is completely fruitless so when we find nocturnal species on day time roosts it is extremely exciting. This is doubly so in the case of Hodgson's Frogmouth.
Hodgson's Frogmouth is restricted to semi-montaine to montaine forest through a band of countries from India, through Myanmar, Laos and Thailand to Vietnam. You can see the range map on eBird here - https://ebird.org/species/hodfro1. There doesn't seem to be anywhere in its range where it is particularly common and finding them in the dark is quite difficult as they often answer from a concealed perch and do not move around very much. The calls of Hodgson's Frogmouth are as werid as the birds themselves, with male and females having different calls. Listen to a variety of the calls here - https://xeno-canto.org/species/batrachostomus-hodgsoni
On a few occasions I have heard the female call during the day time but tracking her down as been really difficult, even where the understorey of the forest is not that dense. They seem to call when one is standing a certain distance away but as soon as one moves, they will not reply to call playback. I got lucky on a couple of occasions, tracking them down during the day but most sightings are of nesting birds.
In Northern Thailand, in most years, at least one Hodgson's Frogmouth nest is found, close to a road or trail, in mid-February to March allowing large numbers of people to get incredible views of this moving pile of moss. In February 2025 we found a Hodgson's Frogmouth nesting on exactly the same branch as it had done in 2024, allowing me to spend time videoing it.
Hodgson's Frogmouth video - https://youtu.be/3SIKS01EkcY&list=PLKPNVXzWV8HzxUXc9J6jDJ8_10fFw8QgX
In the video link above you can watch the video I created of a male Hodgson's Frogmouth at Doi Inthanon National Park in Northern Thailand.