Potoo

Quick Take

• The potoo's terrifying appearance is actually its greatest survival weapon, though not in the way you'd expect. See the camouflage strategy →
• Its beak looks tiny and harmless, but that impression changes once you discover what's hiding behind it. Discover the hidden mouth →
• This bird raises its chick without ever building a nest, and the solution it found is stranger than anything you'd imagine. See how eggs are kept →
• Scientists watching potoo parents at the nest face a problem no field guide has solved: they genuinely cannot tell mom from dad. Explore parenting habits →

If you are ever in a South or Central American rainforest at night and hear a spine-tingling sound that reminds you of a mournful or angry ghost, don’t worry. It’s (probably) nothing supernatural, but it is the sound made by a remarkable bird called the potoo. This ancient bird was once found all over the world in prehistoric times, but is now found only in the New World. Despite its strange appearance and the even stranger sounds it makes, the potoo is harmless to anything that it doesn’t consider prey.

Four Amazing Facts About the Potoo

• Its mouth is so large that it doesn’t need to tear its prey apart, but can swallow it whole.
• It doesn’t fly during the day but pretends to be a broken tree branch.
• Potoos can be distinguished from their cousins, the nightjars, because they lack bristles around the mouth.
• Potoos are also fairly closely related to the oilbird, with which they share the Steatornithes subclade.

Where To Find the Potoo

The potoo is found mostly in the forests of Central and South America, though there are populations in Mexico and Hispaniola. They are found at the edges of forests and within tropical rainforests, though they’ve also been found on farms where they successfully imitate fence posts.

Nests

Potoos do not build nests. They simply find a depression in a broken-off branch that’s wide and deep enough to hold an egg, and the female deposits an egg into it.

Classification and Scientific Name

The potoo belongs to the Aves class, which encompasses all birds. It also belongs to the Nyctibiiformes order and the family Nyctibiidae, with most species placed in the genus Nyctibius and the Rufous Potoo in the genus Phyllaemulor. These two words come from the Greek nuktos, which means “night” and bios, which means “to live.” So the name means “night-living.” The pronunciation of the genus is nye TIB ee us, while the pronunciation of the family is nye tib ee FORM ez. There are seven potoo species. They are:

• Great Potoo (Nyctibius grandis)
• Common Potoo (Nyctibius griseus)
• Northern Potoo (Nyctibius jamaicensis)
• White-winged Potoo (Nyctibius leucopterus)
• Long-tailed Potoo (Nyctibius aethereus)
• Rufous Potoo (Nyctibius bracteatus)
• Andean Potoo (Phyllaemulor maculosus)

Potoo Appearance

Depending on the species, the potoo’s appearance ranges from merely odd to, in the case of the beady-eyed, satchel-mouthed great potoo, truly scary. What they all have in common is the colors of their plumage, which come in shades of gray, white, and black to help camouflage them against tree limbs. Their heads, tails, and wings are large in proportion to their bodies, and the size of their mouths, when opened, is enormous. When a potoo’s mouth is closed, its size is hidden by the bird’s tiny beak. Not only is the mouth large, but there is a tooth on the edge of the upper jaw that helps the bird grip prey. Another feature, more prominent even than the mouth, is the bird’s eyes. They are enormous, scary, and reflect torchlight. The irises are yellow or brown, and the pupils can differ in size. Sometimes the pupil looks like it engulfs the entire eyeball, which makes the bird look rather unreal.

Occasionally, there are albino potoos. These albino birds have pure white feathers and red eyes, which makes them look more like a ghost than their fellow “ghost birds.” Sometimes albino potoos are sold as pets.

Even chicks are well camouflaged before they fledge. Baby potoos look very much like bits of lichen on the stump where they hatched.

Potoo Behavior

Potoos are solitary and elusive birds and are mostly active at night. During the day, they rest on broken tree limbs or objects that resemble them, and align their bodies so perfectly with the wood and sit so motionlessly that they seem to disappear. If a predator does find one, the bird freezes even more. If this looks like it won’t work, the potoo opens its eyes and its mouth, which should startle a would-be predator enough to allow the bird to simply fly away.

Potoos hunt at night, swooping down upon prey from their perch.

Potoo Diet

Potoos eat large insects. The great potoo, the largest of the birds, sometimes takes smaller birds and bats as well.

Predators and Threats

The potoo is a big bird, but it is still subject to predation. Among its predators are monkeys, including capuchin and spider monkeys, marmosets, tayras, which are South American weasels, and birds of prey such as the collared forest falcon.

Reproduction, Babies, and Lifespan

Potoos are monogamous and breed during the wet season in their habitat. After the pair mates, the female lays one lilac-spotted egg in a secure divot in a tree stump where they already roost. The parents take turns incubating the egg, but males and females look so much alike that scientists have a hard time telling whether it’s the mother or father that’s at the nest at any one time. Only one parent tends to the baby at a time. The egg hatches after about a month. At first, the chick resembles a tuft of lichen or mold, but as it starts to fledge, it begins to adopt the alert behavior of its parents. After about a month, the chick leaves its hatching site to explore. It only sees its parents after dark, when they bring it food. After about two months, the chick has left the area permanently. It’s believed that the potoo has a lifespan of around 10 to 25 years, though longevity data for these elusive birds remains limited.

Potoo Population

Potoos are abundant, and most species have a very wide range. As of 2019, there were between 500,000 and 5 million common potoos alone. However, the populations of these birds are in decline, even though all of them are listed as of least concern.