The Story
I photographed this Hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin) at Playa El Diablo, near La Macarena, Meta, Colombia, in February 2021. It lives in swamps, riparian forests and mangroves of the Amazon and Orinoco basins. Its chicks have two claws on each wing, and when a predator finds them they drop into the water, swim away under the surface and later use those claws to climb back to the nest. It eats mostly leaves, and one study in Venezuela found its diet was 82 percent leaves, 10 percent flowers and 8 percent fruit. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I used a Canon R5 with the RF 800mm f/11 plus the RF 1.4x extender for this one, at 1/3000 sec, f/16, ISO 6400, −2 EV. Birds recorded in the La Macarena reserve up to 1978 already numbered 456 species, about 27 percent of all the birds of Colombia.
©2021 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Hoatzin (Opisthocomus hoazin) belongs to the family Opisthocomidae (Hoatzin) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2024), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List