This is the Common Potoo – The Master of Disguise and Nighttime Silence
Looking like a chunk of tree bark with eyes, the Common Potoo is a nocturnal bird that’s basically a professional at playing hide-and-seek. Native across Central and South America, it perches motionless on branches by day, blending so perfectly with tree trunks that you’d swear it’s just a lump of wood.
By night, it comes alive with haunting, eerie calls that echo through the forest — a sound that can give you chills if you’re out after dark. It hunts silently for moths, beetles, and other flying insects, snapping them up mid-air with its huge, gaping mouth.
It doesn’t build nests in the usual sense — instead, it lays a single egg right on a bare branch or stump, relying on camouflage and stillness to protect its young. Both parents share incubation and feeding duties.
Unflashy, spooky, and utterly unique, the Common Potoo is the forest’s stealthy night guardian — a master of stillness and silence that few ever notice until it’s too late.