Solitary tinamou

Appearance

The solitary tinamou is a large brownish tinamou heavily barred with black. Its neck, breast, and flanks are grey, and its belly is white. It has a dark brown crown and a white throat on its yellowish head and neck, which contrasts with a distinctive buff line on the side of the neck. It averages 45 cm in length.

Status

It is currently threatened by the ongoing deforestation caused by urbanisation, industrialisation, agricultural expansion, and associated road-building. It is also hunted excessively. Consequently, the IUCN classifies it as a Near Threatened species, it may soon become vulnerable with a range occurrence of 990,000 km2 . The population formerly believed to be referred to by ''pernambucensis'' is either very rare or already extirpated. These northern birds have always been fairly rare in historical times, with possibly not more than 6 specimens in museums.

It has been noted that this species is not hard to introduce to suitable habitat. Solitary tinamous were found to persist in numbers in a forest fragment of 1,500 acres where they were not originally found. It is not considered globally threatened by the IUCN.

Behavior

Like other tinamous, it lays oddly-shaped eggs with a glossy, colorful shell, and it eats fruits, and seeds off the ground or low plants. Males will incubate the eggs which are in a nest on the ground, and will also rear the young for the short period of time before they are independent.

Habitat

The solitary tinamou is found in lowland humid tropical forest and montane forests up to 1,200 m ASL. It readily inhabits secondary forest and can be not uncommon in extensively used plots, tolerating selective logging to some degree. Large plantations of exotic species are not well-liked. But the birds can be plentiful enough to withstand some hunting for example in a mosaic of ''cabruca'' smallholder plantings, interspersed with secondary growth with dense ''caeté'' Marantaceae and ''Merostachys'' bamboo understorey as well as higher ''Guadua'' bamboo and full-grown heart-of-palm trees . In little-disturbed Dense Ombrophyllous Montane Forest ecotone, thriving populations may exist in forest fragments as small as 1,000 acres .