It’s been fun looking through recent tour reports and photos and realizing we have the full South American potoo sextet illustrated. We know there are a lot of nightbird fans out there, so we thought you might like to look through the images, too. Such fantastic birds — amazingly camouflaged, appearing like stumps on their dayroosts, with large eyes for great nocturnal vision (potoos hunt flying insects), and a huge gape that extends well past the eye so virtually the whole head opens wide during an insect capture. On top of it all, they have a great diversity of very cool vocalizations, each species very different from the next.
Long-tailed Potoo from our Peruvian Rainforests of the Tambopata tour by guide Pepe Rojas: this is a long, slim potoo that is most often seen on staked-out dayroosts at various lodges rather than at night.This one is really looking like a stump, right? Andean Potoo from our Mountains of Manu tour in Peru by guide Dan Lane. As the name suggests, this is a species of higher elevations than the others.Rufous Potoo is the most colorful of all the potoos, and it also has that very distinctive “keyhole” mark in its eye. This was photographed on our Rio Negro Paradise: Manaus tour in Brazil by participant Cliff HenselWhite-winged Potoo was virtually unknown in the wild 20 years ago, but we’ve got its number! This one was photographed by guide Bret Whitney on our Rio Negro Paradise: Manaus tour in Brazil.Largest of them all is the Great Potoo, seen here in a photo by participant Steve Wakeham from our Mountains of Manu, Peru tour. It gives quite the blood-curdling scream/roar at night, too!And last, but not least, is the Common Potoo — indeed usually the most commonly seen one on various tours, both on night outings and on dayroosts. This one was photographed by participant Cliff Hensel on our Jaguar Spotting (Brazil) tour.
