Greater Rhea Gallery

Rhea americana

The Birds of the World website introduces the Greater Rhea with this descriptive information: Greater Rhea is South America’s largest bird. It is flightless, with a smaller relative, Lesser Rhea (Rhea pennata), restricted to Patagonia and the southern Andes. As in all ratites, the males of Greater Rhea incubate and raise the young. Males mate with several females, all of which lay eggs in a communal nest. This mixed clutch can be sizable. It is not uncommon to see a male caring for 20 or more striped young. The Greater Rhea is found in grasslands, savanna, or grassy wetlands across southern and eastern South America. Much of their habitat is now also used for ranching, and a seemingly ever-increasing percentage has been converted to cropland, potentially reducing available habitat for the rhea, although the birds will forage in agricultural areas adjacent to native vegetation. Furthermore, fencing represents another problem and can affect the movements of the rhea; this species does not jump over fences, although it can pass underneath them. The species is much exploited by local people in some parts of its distribution; on the other hand, in Rio Grande do Norte, Brazil, where the species now persists only as an introduction, the Greater Rhea is the state bird and elsewhere in the country’s northeast, in Piauí, prehistoric stone paintings are known from as long ago as 12,000‒8,000 BC.

I met my first Greater Rhea on the morning of Tuesday, August 22, 2023.  Our Jeff Parker Tour group was headed to Fazenda Santa Tereza for a couple of days of watching birds and wildlife in the Pantanal Region of Brazil.  We were on MT-060 which turns into the Transpantaneira Highway when we spotted this bird near the road.  For details of my Brazilian trip that include the sighting of this bird, look here.  Below are a couple of my photos of this unusual bird.