The Story
I made this photo of a Great Potoo (Nyctibius grandis) at La Macarena, Meta, Colombia. By day it usually perches high in big trees, often more than 12 meters above the ground. It hunts large insects and small vertebrates in sallies from high perches, and it almost always returns to the same perch. The branches it chooses are usually 20 to 30 centimeters thick. It lives mostly in dense lowland forest, forest edges and clearings. The Sierra de la Macarena is home to about 420 bird species, along with eight species of primates.
I used a Pentax K-1 with the HD Pentax-D FA 150-450mm f/4.5-5.6 for this one, at 1/200 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400. IUCN lists the Great Potoo as Least Concern, with a decreasing population.
©2020 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Great Potoo (Nyctibius grandis) belongs to the family Nyctibiidae (Potoos) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2020), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List
