Birds

Potoo

Nyctibiidae · also called poor-me-one

Not Evaluated insectivore Rainforest Temperate forest

You can walk right past a potoo. By day it perches out in the open on top of a broken branch, points its bill at the sky, half-shuts its eyes, and becomes, to all appearances, a piece of dead wood. Only at night does it move, opening a mouth the size of its whole face to catch moths out of the air.

Overview

Potoos are the family Nyctibiidae, seven species of nocturnal insect-catchers in the forests of Central and South America, related to the nightjars. A potoo is grey-brown and bark-patterned, with a small bill that opens into a huge gape, and enormous yellow or orange eyes. It hunts moths, beetles, and other large insects in short flights from a perch, in the manner of a nightjar or a flycatcher.

The stump act

By day the potoo does not hide. It perches openly on a broken snag, stretches upright, points its bill skyward, and freezes for hours, its plumage making it look like a continuation of the wood. Its eyelids have notches that let it watch for danger without opening its eyes and breaking the disguise. It lays a single egg on a bare branch top with no nest.

A bird of folklore, and of memes

The common potoo’s mournful descending call at night appears in stories of grief across Latin America. And a potoo photographed with a flash, eyes wide and mouth agape, looks so startled that it became an internet meme as “the potoo bird”.

Status

Potoos as a family are Not Evaluated. The common and great potoos are widespread and reasonably secure; several smaller-range species depend on continuous mature forest.

Potoo: common questions

Why does a potoo point its bill at the sky?

It is the key move in the bird's camouflage. A potoo spends the day perched openly on the top of a broken branch or post rather than hidden in dense cover, and its defence is to look like part of the wood. By stretching its neck fully, pointing its bill straight up, drawing its feathers in tight, and staying motionless, the potoo turns its whole body into a smooth, tapering, bark-textured extension of the stump it is sitting on. Predators and birdwatchers alike routinely fail to spot a potoo even when looking straight at it. The bird holds this pose for hours and only breaks it if something comes very close, when it may slowly turn to keep the threat in view or, as a last resort, open its huge eyes and gape in a startling threat display.

What are the potoo's magic eyes?

They are small notches or slits in the potoo's eyelids. When a potoo is doing its daytime freeze it keeps its eyes almost or completely closed, both to hide the give-away bright iris and to complete the dead-stump look, but a bird with its eyes shut cannot watch for danger. The eyelid notches solve this by letting a thin sliver of the eye stay exposed, so the potoo can still register movement and changes in light and keep track of an approaching predator without opening its eyes and revealing itself. Several potoo species have them, and they are one of the more unusual anti-predator adaptations known in birds.

Is the potoo related to the owl?

No. Potoos look owl-like at first glance, with their large forward-set eyes, big heads, cryptic plumage, and nocturnal, insect-hunting habits, but that is convergence rather than kinship. Potoos belong to a group that also contains the nightjars, the frogmouths, the oilbird, and the swifts and hummingbirds, and within that group they are closest to the nightjars. Owls are a separate order entirely. The clearest differences are the feet, since an owl has powerful grasping talons for seizing prey and a potoo has weak feet used only for perching, and the hunting method, since an owl drops on prey on the ground while a potoo sallies out to catch insects in the air.

How did the potoo become an internet meme?

Photographs, mostly taken at night with a flash, catch the potoo with its enormous eyes wide open and its huge mouth agape in a startled expression that looks almost cartoonishly shocked or delighted, quite different from the smooth, sleepy stump it resembles by day. Those images, especially of the common potoo, spread widely online in the 2010s under the label the potoo bird, often paired with captions about the bird looking amazed or unimpressed. The pictures are real and the bird genuinely looks like that when disturbed at night, though during daylight, in its camouflage freeze, it is one of the least conspicuous birds in the forest.

Sources & further reading

Written by HideShark Editorial Team · reviewed by HideShark Science Desk. Published November 1, 2026. Last updated November 1, 2026.

Quick facts

Scientific name: Nyctibiidae
Diet: Large flying insects, especially moths and beetles, plus flying ants, grasshoppers, and small bats, snatched from the air in short sallies from a perch and then eaten back on the perch, a hunting style like a nightjar or a flycatcher
The disguise: By day a potoo perches on top of a broken branch or a fence post, stretches its neck straight up, points its bill at the sky, compresses its feathers, and half-closes its eyes, so that its grey-brown bark-patterned plumage makes it look exactly like a continuation of the dead wood
A mouth like a net: The bill is small, but it opens into an enormous gape far wider than the head, ringed with no bristles, which the bird flings open to engulf an insect on the wing
Eyes that see with the lids shut: The huge yellow or orange eyes are built for night vision, and the eyelids carry two or three notches, sometimes called magic eyes, that let a roosting potoo detect movement and light without opening its eyes and breaking its disguise
No nest at all: A potoo lays a single egg in a shallow depression or a broken knot on top of a snag, with no nest material, and one parent incubates it by day in the full camouflage freeze while the other roosts nearby, then they swap at night
A voice out of folklore: The common potoo gives a mournful, descending series of notes at night, and across Latin America this call is woven into stories of grief, a widow, or a lost lover, giving the bird local names that translate as poor-me-one and mother of the moon
Bigger and smaller kinds: There are seven species, from the great potoo at around 50 cm, a formidable night predator that also takes small birds and bats, down to the rufous potoo of the Amazon at about 23 cm, which mimics a dead leaf and sways in the breeze
Range: Lowland and foothill forest, forest edge, and wooded savanna from southern Mexico through Central America and across most of tropical South America to northern Argentina, plus some Caribbean islands.
Conservation status: Not Evaluated ≈ Not assessed as a family; the common and great potoos are widespread and reasonably secure across large ranges, while several species with smaller ranges, such as the white-winged and long-tailed potoos, are more local and depend on continuous mature forest in the wild