How to Use nocturnal in a Sentence

nocturnal

adjective
  • One night, the group hired a local guide to drive in to the park to look for nocturnal wildlife.
    Scott McMurren, Anchorage Daily News, 23 July 2022
  • The nocturnal birds have tufts on their heads that look like horns or ears.
    Helena Wegner, Sacramento Bee, 28 Mar. 2024
  • The music fades and where there were the nocturnal crickets at the start, now there are ocean waves.
    Steve Hochman, SPIN, 9 Mar. 2023
  • But a lot of it is unseen; a lot of the animals in the desert are nocturnal.
    Hazlitt, 26 Oct. 2023
  • The nocturnal owls don’t hoot but make strange screams and hissings sounds at night.
    Karl Schneider, The Indianapolis Star, 1 Apr. 2024
  • And for at least one nocturnal species, the vital clue on a moonless night seems to be our own Milky Way.
    Christie Taylor, Popular Science, 13 Mar. 2024
  • The Amur leopard is nocturnal and lives and hunts alone – mainly in the forests of Russia and China.
    Natalie Neysa Alund, USA TODAY, 29 Mar. 2023
  • In the series, a nocturnal species known as gargoyles are stone during the day but come alive at night.
    Joe Otterson, Variety, 16 Oct. 2023
  • The black ghost knifefish is, as its name implies, a nocturnal hunter.
    Elizabeth Kolbert, The New Yorker, 6 June 2022
  • There are some species of fish, like catfish and knife fish, that are nocturnal, Aqueon says.
    Clare Mulroy, USA TODAY, 8 July 2022
  • Owls, the nocturnal bird, started flying in circles and clawing at the cage right as the sky was turning dark.
    Ella Gonzales, Fort Worth Star-Telegram, 12 Apr. 2024
  • Tawny owls are medium-sized nocturnal birds who have two plumage color morphs, pale gray and dark brown.
    Grrlscientist, Forbes, 26 Feb. 2024
  • That evening our nocturnal visitor studied us from the edge of the campfire glow.
    Ernie Cowan, San Diego Union-Tribune, 21 Jan. 2024
  • The video shows the three artists in a dark lot, surrounded by dancers, reflecting the track’s hard-hitting nocturnal vibe.
    Julyssa Lopez, Rolling Stone, 3 Nov. 2023
  • The researchers are still unsure of why the nocturnal creatures have such acute eyesight.
    Paul Smaglik, Discover Magazine, 11 Apr. 2024
  • Pablo's words came to my mind later that evening during our night walk, when all of the jungle's nocturnal creatures are in full swing.
    Jennifer Flowers, Travel + Leisure, 31 Dec. 2021
  • Most owls today are nocturnal, though some, like snowy owls, burrowing owls and great gray owls, hunt during the day and night.
    Sara Novak, Discover Magazine, 6 June 2022
  • And nocturnal creatures like bats are sure to stir from their daytime slumber.
    Eric Lagatta, USA TODAY, 26 Feb. 2024
  • What is not clear is what happens to nocturnal animals when the eclipse occurs, Speck said.
    Julia Jacobo, ABC News, 3 Apr. 2024
  • In the last decade, the night sky became twice as bright due to the increasing use of LEDs, Owens said, which hurts the populations of nocturnal fireflies.
    Laura Doan, CBS News, 24 Aug. 2023
  • Slaght studies the Blakiston’s fish-owl, which doesn’t have features that nocturnal owls do, such as wide facial discs and silent flight.
    Margaret Osborne, Smithsonian Magazine, 4 Apr. 2022
  • The nocturnal fish are native to the waters between New Guinea and Australia and live in shallow areas near the sandy bottom.
    Caitlin O'Kane, CBS News, 9 Nov. 2023
  • In the summer, echidnas switch to nocturnal behavior to escape the heat.
    Ashley Strickland, CNN, 18 Jan. 2023
  • The recreation preserve invites you to bring your lantern to try your luck at catching some fish in the nocturnal wonderland.
    The Hub, San Diego Union-Tribune, 2 July 2023
  • Creeping through the forests of Thailand, the nocturnal predator hunts under the cover of darkness.
    Irene Wright, Miami Herald, 1 May 2024
  • Kill your outdoor lights or at least switch over to red bulbs, which seem to be less of a problem for bats and other nocturnal animals.
    Jeanette Marantos, Los Angeles Times, 1 Aug. 2023
  • But the hunting hasn’t worked, either because of the folks moving them around or the hogs learning to go nocturnal, sidestep traps, and avoid engine noise.
    Tim Newcomb, Popular Mechanics, 21 Mar. 2023
  • The apex of the tour is the nocturnal wildlife trek, conducted aboard a long-tail boat drifting down the Nam Nern River in search of wild and endangered animals.
    Sandra MacGregor, Forbes, 14 Feb. 2024
  • The other factor that plays a role is that there are more frequent nocturnal [tornado] events there.
    Andrea Thompson, Scientific American, 16 Dec. 2021
  • There's stargazing, star parties, nocturnal wildlife encounters and the Walk the Planets trail, which features the planets laid out to scale.
    Catherine Garcia, theweek, 25 Jan. 2024

Some of these examples are programmatically compiled from various online sources to illustrate current usage of the word 'nocturnal.' Any opinions expressed in the examples do not represent those of Merriam-Webster or its editors. Send us feedback about these examples.

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