Potoo on Perch

Explanation: On a hike through some beautiful subtropical forests outside the town of Mindo, in the western mid-elevation slopes of the Andes Mountains of Ecuador in South America, I was checking out the subcanopy for birds when I spotted this odd stub on the top of this broken-top tree.

Aha! Here was perched a Common Potoo in a typical pose on daytime perch to blend greatly into ... well, tops of dead trees, avoiding predators.

Note how she has her head pointed upward in a posture to better blend into the vertical line of the tree. And on a daytime perch like this, she sits motionless. And her mottled coloration also blends well. What a great combination of morphological and behavioral adaptations to avoid detection and predation!

I moved a bit to my left and -- in the right-hand photo, above -- I discovered that this was an adult female, with a chick at her breast. Notice the lateral dark lines on the chick's face, also a wonderful adaptation for crypsis, to break up the body outline and blend into the mottled background coloration.

Here, I found the female again, at night, where she seemed far more alert, with head down.
Her glowing eye was a function of my camera flash, which did not seem to disturb her, although I did leave quickly afterward, to be sure.

Here, the chick is visible again at her breast.

Common Potoos are widely distributed in South America, and are related to frogmouths (found in Australia and in south and southeast Asia) and nightjars (found world-wide), although all are in their own taxonomic families.
Despite massive clearing of tropical forests, particularly in Amazonian Brazil, Common Potoos are still listed by IUCN Red List as Least Concern, although with a decreasing population.

EPOW - Ecology Picture of the Week