Horned Screamer
Anhima cornuta
Enormous, ungainly ogre of a bird. Found around freshwater marshes and rivers in Amazonian lowlands. Dark gray and black overall with a scaly white neck and white belly. Named for the characteristic unicorn-like appendage on top of its head. Walks along river banks and perches in waterside vegetation, sometimes quite high. Honking song can be heard at great distances—a deep, reedy “ha-moo-co” often uttered in duet.
Identification
The horned screamer is a massive 84–95 cm (33–37.5 in) long, 3.5 kg (7.7 lb) bird, with a small chicken-like bill. The upperparts, head, and breast are black, with white speckles on the crown, throat and wing coverts. There is a long spiny structure projecting forward from the crown. This structure is unique among birds and is not derived from a feather but is a cornified structure that is loosely attached to the skull and grows continuously while often breaking at its tip. This gives this species its name. It has very long and lanky legs and three large toes in each. The belly and under wing coverts are white. It has two sharp spurs on its wings and feet which are only partially webbed.
Taxonomy
Already known in the 17th century, the horned screamer was described in 1766 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae. He introduced the binomial name Palamedea cornuta. The horned screamer is now the only species placed in the genus Anhima that was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. The specific epithet cornuta is the Latin word for "horned". The German naturalist Georg Marcgrave had used the Latin name Anhima in 1648 for the horned screamer in his Historia naturalis Brasiliae. The name was from the word for the bird in the Tupi language of South America.
- Scientific name
- Anhima cornuta
- Authority
- (Linnaeus, 1766)
- Order
- Anseriformes
- Family
- Anhimidae
- Genus
- Anhima
Range and habitat
The horned screamer is found in lowlands from Colombia, Venezuela, Brazil, Bolivia, Peru, Ecuador, French Guiana, Suriname, and Guyana. It has been possibly extirpated from Trinidad. Despite having declined locally, it remains widespread and is fairly common overall. Its range in Brazil appears to have expanded in recent years.
- Migration
- Resident species
Behavior
Screamers, like most birds, tend to group together, but are for the most part semi-social. The existence of the screamer is rather sedentary. It lives in well-vegetated marshes and feeds on water plants.
Conservation
- Population trend
- declining
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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Black-tailed Godwit
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Gregarious medium-sized wader with a long, slightly uptilted bill. Note the very long, pink-based bill. Breeding plumage has bright rusty head and breast, dark barring on belly; nonbreeding plumage has rather plain grayish head, breast, and upperparts, unlike streaked breast and back of Bar-tailed Godwit. In flight shows bold white wing stripe, white rump, and black tail. Fairly common but often local; breeds in grassy wetlands, and found year-round in fresh and brackish marshes, and on adjacent tidal flats. Feeds mainly by wading in deep water, probing with its long bill.
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