“Is there a bird more stranger than the ethereal Potoo?” asks Jeff Corwin in a recent Instagram post. “A relative of the night jar and frogmouth bird, potoos are nocturnal, melting into the scrubby backdrop of neotropical grassland habitats. Their remarkable camouflage is unmatched in nature.”
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Indeed, a potoo’s camouflage is remarkable, and this is on full display in Corwin’s video, which shows not one but two of these incredible birds hiding in plain sight. Even though his video appears to be of a bare wooden tree stump sticking out of the ground, there’s really a mother potoo and her chick blending in perfectly with the broken timber.
Potoos live throughout tropical Central America and South America. They’re active at night and spend most of the daytime hours doing what they do best—blending in.
See the potoo’s bizarre camouflage here: