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Sunbittern — printable fact sheet
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Sunbittern
Eurypyga helias
The sunbittern (Eurypyga helias) spends most of its time as an unremarkable brown, heron-like bird stalking the edges of neotropical forest streams, and then, when threatened, it detonates. It throws both wings forward and open, spreads the tail, and lowers the head behind them,…
Did you know?
- The Sunbittern shares a close evolutionary relationship with the Kagu of New Caledonia, despite living on opposite sides of the world.
- Its wing eyespots turn a spread-winged bird into a giant staring face, a bluff aimed squarely at a predator's fear of eyes. Its closest living relative is the kagu, a flightless bird found only on New Caledonia, over 13,000 kilometres away. Sunbitterns have been observed using bait, dropping insects or feathers on the water to lure fish, a rare example of tool use in birds. Despite the heron-like build and stalking hunt, it is not related to herons at all.
What I learned
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