The Star-spotted Nightjar is a nocturnal bird of dry grassland and scrub. By day, it rests on the ground among fallen leaves.
The sexes look alike. The gray-brown to sandy back is finely mottled, with star-like marks on the head and shoulders and white patches beside the throat.
It rests on leaf litter by day and uses dry scrub, grassland, and stony semi-desert. Males may call from the ground at dusk and dawn.
Its food includes mantises, moths, beetles and grasshoppers.
Both sexes have a white spot on each of the four outermost primaries and narrow pale tips to the outermost tail feathers. There is no hindneck collar.
Immatures resemble adults but have more uniform, more rufous upperparts.
An extinction-risk assessment has not been added yet.