Black Guan

Chamaepetes unicolor

eBird gives this description for the Black Guan:  Large chickenlike bird found in montane forests. Entirely black plumage with blue facial skin, red eye, and reddish legs. Sexes similar. Unlikely to be confused: smaller and blacker than Crested Guan; lacks curled head feathers of Great Curassow; also found at higher elevations. Can be seen on the ground or in trees, usually in pairs or small family groups. Feeds on fruit.

The Birds of the World website introduces the Black Guan with this descriptive information:  It often comes as a surprise to new visitors to the neotropics to see large, turkey-shaped birds inhabiting the canopy of the forest, as opposed to being terrestrial.  The Black Guan is one such arboreal cracid.  An endemic to the cloud forests and montane evergreen forests of the highlands of Costa Rica and Panama, the Black Guan is a distinctive and striking small guan.  The body is all black, with blue bare skin around a red eye and red legs. In the forest, this bird can be very difficult to see and is not nearly as vocal as the Crested Guan (Penelope purpurascens) of the lowlands and foothills; though it can become at least somewhat confiding if coming in to feed at fruit feeders.  The Black Guan is frugivorous, feeding on fruits and berries from the canopy and subcanopy of the forest. The Black Guan prefers intact, undisturbed forest, and is thus (inevitably) threatened by habitat loss.

I saw my first Black Guan at the Casa Monge Lodge on the morning of February 8, 2023.  A group of birders was staked out on a Resplendent Quetzal perch when two Black Guan were spotted in the dense foliage.