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  Profile

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  In flight

Waterfowl

Orinoco Goose

Neochen jubata

• uncommon
• 70 km/h
• Least Concern

Rarely swims despite being a goose. Perches in Orinoco riverside trees and nests in hollow trunks.

Population

15,000–40,000 mature individuals, decreasing

Habitat

Forest-lined banks of tropical rivers, damp clearings, wet savannas, wooded islands, and muddy/sandy margins of large freshwater wetlands, mostly in lowlands (to ~500 m, occasionally recorded up to 2,600 m); avoids closed-canopy forest interior

Fun fact

The Orinoco Goose practices conspecific (intraspecific) brood parasitism: a female will sometimes lay her eggs in the nest of another Orinoco Goose pair rather than her own — parasitized nests average around 19 eggs versus about 7 in unparasitized nests, and tend to have higher hatching success.

Range

Northern and central South America east of the Andes: eastern Colombia, Venezuela and the Guianas south through Ecuador, the Brazilian (Amazonian) interior, eastern Peru and Bolivia to Paraguay and northwestern Argentina; absent from Chile, the Guianas' coastal strip, and Uruguay

Diet

Largely herbivorous — grasses, sedges, aquatic plants and algae, leaves and seed heads; occasionally takes worms, insects, crustaceans, and molluscs

Size

0.685 m