Common Potoo

A nocturnal bird so perfectly disguised as broken tree bark that it can perch in plain sight all day and go unnoticed. By night it hunts flying insects from a fixed perch, and its mournful, descending call is far more often heard than the bird itself is seen.

Spotted by chance against tree bark during the day, exactly the camouflaged, motionless pose that gives this species its reputation as one of the hardest birds to photograph.