Hey everyone! It’s a new year and I’ve got a new pattern poll up ready for voting on your favorites! But as those votes come in I wanted to share a pattern for the one on the leaderboard as 2025 came to a close — a Great-Eared Nightjar, also known as a Dragon Bird!

This is one of those unique animals that got a little famous on the internet for a brief time because it has this adorable and distinctive head shape that makes it look like a dragon. I wanted to include it in my previous Bird Puffs plush collection, but its head was such a unique shape I couldn’t include it with the others (without making the instructions confusing 😅).

So this one has a similar body shape to the bird puffs, but with the unique coloring and adorable ear feathers! It has some tricky curves in the head, so the head top is split into two pieces to make it a little simpler. It’s still rated a 4/10 in difficulty though.

As always, the pattern comes with applique templates to make the eyes. These will work if you’re sewing the details by regular machine or by hand. If you have an embroidery machine, you’ll find the embroidery files available with the buttons below. I hope you all like it!