Great Potoo

Nyctibius grandis

The Birds of the World website introduces the Great Potoo with this descriptive information:  With its characteristic drawn-out moaning growl, the vocalizations of the Great Potoo are among the most exciting and perhaps most unsettling nocturnal sounds in the Neotropics. Apart from its vocalizations, the Great Potoo is an intriguing species. Great Potoos are nocturnal and feed on large flying insects, and occasionally bats, which they capture in sallies from a high perch. During the day, they remain motionless in mimic of broken tree branches. The Great Potoo is distributed throughout humid and semihumid forested habitats in Central and South America. Across this vast region, there is little geographic variation in size or in plumage; two subspecies sometimes are recognized, but these do not differ greatly from each other. Despite the lack of conspicuous geographic variation, populations on either side of the Andes have been found to be very distinct genetically. This level of divergence is similar to the genetic divergence found between other species of potoo, pointing the possibility for ‘cryptic’ species within the Great Potoo lineage.

I met my first Great Potoo on Friday morning, August 25, 2023.  Our Jeff Parker Tour group was staying at Southwild’s Jaguar Flotel and on this morning we were on a boat excursion exploring neary waterways when we spotted the Potoo, perched motionless high in a tree.  For details of my Brazilian trip that include the sighting of this bird, look here.  Below are a couple of my photos of this rather strange nocturnal bird.