[13] Males of this morph have silver-grey upperparts with black streaks and slightly paler underparts with white barring and brown to rufous mottling.

[14] Their silvery-grey plumage, adorned with patterns of white, black, and brown streaks and mottles,[15] enables them to seamlessly blend into the appearance of a fractured tree branch, rendering them nearly invisible in the bright light of day.

Only when closely approached do they emerge from their concealed positions, either taking flight or issuing warning signals to potential predators.

[17] When faced with threats, adult tawny frogmouths employ a distinctive alarm call that serves as a signal to their chicks.

This call instructs the young birds to maintain a state of silence and immobility, ensuring that their natural plumage camouflage remains intact and uncompromised.

[4] Tawny frogmouths are found throughout most of the Australian mainland[17] except in far western Queensland, the central Northern Territory, and most of the Nullarbor Plain.

[5] Tawny frogmouths are carnivorous[19] and are considered to be among Australia's most effective pest-control birds, as their diet consists largely of species regarded as vermin or pests in houses, farms and gardens.

[5] The bulk of their diet is composed of large nocturnal insects, such as moths, as well as spiders, worms, slugs and snails,[12] but also includes a variety of bugs, beetles, wasps, ants, centipedes, millipedes and scorpions.

[18] During daylight hours, healthy tawny frogmouths generally do not actively look for food, though they may sit with their mouths open, snapping them shut when an insect enters.

Tawny frogmouths feed mainly by pouncing from a tree or other elevated perch to take large insects or small vertebrates from the ground[6] using their beaks with great precision.

[22] The wide distribution range of the tawny frogmouth includes areas of the Australian continent where winter night temperatures regularly approach or grow colder than 0 °C and warm summers can have extremes above 40 °C.

[25] During winter, tawny frogmouths choose northerly oriented positions on branches that are more exposed to sunlight to increase body heat.

During this time, the birds open their beaks wide, close their eyes, and move their heads to the side to allow sunrays to penetrate beneath the thick layer of feathers.

[27] Torpor results in energy conservation by significantly slowing down heart rate and metabolism, which lowers body temperature.

[5] Birds of prey such as hobbies and falcons, as well as rodents and tree-climbing snakes, also cause major damage to the clutches by taking eggs and nestlings.

In subtropical areas where food is available throughout the year, tawny frogmouths sometimes start brooding earlier in winter to avoid the awakening of snakes after brumation.

Since 1998, a cluster of cases of neurological disease has occurred in tawny frogmouths in the Sydney area, caused by the parasite Angiostrongylus cantonensis, a rat lungworm.

They are often killed or injured on rural roads during feeding, as they fly in front of cars when chasing insects illuminated in the beam of the headlights.

[27] Large-scale land clearing of eucalypt trees and intense bushfires are serious threats to their populations, as they tend not to move to other areas if their homes are destroyed.

[30] House cats are the most significant introduced predator of the tawny frogmouth, but dogs and foxes are known to also occasionally kill the birds.

[5] When tawny frogmouths pounce to catch prey on the ground, they are slow to return to flight and vulnerable to attack from these predators.

[28] As they have adapted to live in close proximity to human populations, tawny frogmouths are at high risk of exposure to pesticides.

[30] Continued widespread use of insecticides and rodent poisons are hazardous as they remain in the system of the target animal and can be fatal to a tawny frogmouth that eats them.

[28] The effect of these toxins is often indirect, as they can be absorbed into fatty tissue with the bird experiencing no overt signs of ill health until the winter, when the fat deposits are drawn on and the poison enters the bloodstream.