- Tinamus major
Description
Photographed: La Gamba, Costa Rica.
Identification
Great Tinamou (Tinamus major)
Identification: A large tinamou, olive-brown above spotted and barred with black, paler and greyer below, flanks barred black, belly whitish and undertail cinnamon. Crown and neck rufous, occipital crest and supercilium blackish. Legs blue-grey.
Length 46cm.
Range: From southern Puebla, Vera Cruz and Oaxaca in southern Mexico to Panama, and in northern South America from Colombia and Venezuela south to northern Bolivia and western Brazil. Resident.
Habitat: Rainforest and cloud forest from sea-level up to 1,500m and often near water. Nests at the base of a tree and roosts in trees. Fairly common over much of range and less secretive than some other tinamous, though more often heard than seen, usually solitary.
Voice: Plaintive tremulous paired whistles, uttered most often at dawn and dusk.
Subspecies: Race percautus occurs in southern Mexico and Guatemala, robustus from central Guatemala to northern Nicaragua, fuscipennis from east Nicaragua to Panama, castaneiceps in south-west Costa Rica and western Panama, brunniventris in central Panama, and saturatus in eastern Panama and northern Colombia. In South America; latifrons occurs in west Colombia and west Ecuador, zuliensis in eastern Colombia and western Venezuela, major in the Guianas and northern Brazil, olivascens in eastern Brazil, peruvianus in eastern Colombia, eastern Ecuador and eastern Peru and serratus in southern Venezuela and western Brazil.
