The Story
I made this photo of a Great Potoo (Nyctibius grandis) at La Macarena, Meta, Colombia. 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. By day it usually perches high in big trees, often more than 12 meters above the ground. La Macarena is part of the Sierra de la Macarena and of the Macarena Special Management Area, which brings together several protected areas.
I used a Pentax K-1 with the HD Pentax-D FA 150-450mm f/4.5-5.6 for this one, at 1/80 sec, f/5.6, ISO 200. 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