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  Profile

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  In flight

Nightbirds

Common Potoo

Nyctibius griseus

• epic
• 43 km/h
• Least Concern

Disguised as bark all day on a branch stub. At night, lets out one of the most haunting calls in the forest.

Population

500,000–4,999,999 mature individuals (decreasing)

Habitat

Open woodlands, savanna, forest edges, gallery/riparian forest, and semi-open areas with scattered trees in lowland tropical/subtropical regions; also uses degraded forest, mangroves, and plantations; found from sea level up to about 1,800-1,900 m elevation (avoids cooler montane zones above that).

Fun fact

The Common Potoo camouflages by day as a broken tree stub, choosing a perch that matches its body's diameter and freezing bill-up so its mottled gray-brown plumage disappears against the bark.

Range

Tropical Central and South America: eastern Nicaragua and Costa Rica through Panama, then across most of mainland South America (Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas, Trinidad and Tobago, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Uruguay, northern Argentina); absent from Chile except as a vagrant.

Diet

Nocturnal insectivore; sallies from an exposed perch flycatcher-style to catch large flying insects (moths, flies, other hymenopterans, termites, grasshoppers, locusts, crickets, ants), swallowing them whole.

Size

0.38 m

Wingspan

0.9 m