The Story
This Common Potoo (Nyctibius griseus) sat on a tree stump in the hills above San Pablo de Borbur, in Boyacá, Colombia, with its large yellow eyes open. Potoos choose perches about as wide as their own bodies so their mottled plumage blends into the wood, and the Common Potoo usually lays its egg on a branch stump with no nest material at all. Its song is a melancholy series of notes that drop in pitch and volume, and it keeps the nest clean by ejecting its droppings from the perch. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I made this frame with a Canon R5 and the RF 800mm f/11, at 1/15 sec, f/11, ISO 6400. The Fura and Tena hills near town are promoted for hiking and birdwatching, with a local association running ecological tourism built around their ancestral legend.
©2024 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Common Potoo (Nyctibius griseus) 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