The Story
I photographed this Speckled Chachalaca (Ortalis guttata) at the Mirador Turístico Don Yo, on the old road from Villavicencio to Bogotá, Colombia, in January 2020. It lives across Amazonian Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru, in low or open forest, thickets and riverside woods. Its throat and breast are dark brown with the white speckles that give it its name, and its eye sits in bare slate-blue skin. It mostly forages in small flocks of up to seven birds, in the subcanopy and understory. Its song is a rapid, rhythmic five-note phrase, ha-ga-GAA-gogok. IUCN lists it as Least Concern.
I used a Pentax K-1 with the HD Pentax-D FA 150-450mm f/4.5-5.6 for this one, at 1/100 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400. The Amazonian subspecies occur in protected areas in every country in their range, and they face less hunting pressure than other chachalacas.
©2020 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Speckled Chachalaca (Ortalis guttata) belongs to the family Cracidae (Guans, Chachalacas, and Curassows) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2019). Source: IUCN Red List