Common Potoo

How to find it

Get out before dawn and follow the call: one writer found a roosting bird exactly that way. Listen at night and look for odd shapes on branch tips, especially near streetlamps beside good habitat. A spotlight can pick out potoos by eyeshine at the tops of exposed perches, though lights should be used sparingly and your guide's instructions followed. A guide who knows the local roosts helps a great deal. The Sierpe River in the South Pacific is a good place to find adults roosting, and nests have been reported along its banks.

How to recognise it

Look for an upright, motionless shape on a stump, fence post or dead branch.

Size: about 38 cm long.

Eyes: yellow, almost closed in daytime. At night they shine bright orange in a light beam.

Upperparts: grayish brown with fine mottling.

Breast: a band of large black spots crosses the lower breast.

Head: small feather tufts below the eyes look like horns.

Face: a white malar line followed by a black one.

When it feels threatened, it points its bill at the sky and sleeks its feathers, looking thinner, like a branch.

What it sounds like

Recording: Fabrício Mil Homens Riella, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

At night it hunts insects by flying out from exposed perches. Moths and beetles are on the menu, and by day it may rest on fence posts, dead trees or dry branches.

It lays a single egg with no real nest, set on a stump or broken branch. A roosting bird relies on camouflage, and at dusk it relaxes into a more horizontal, owl-like posture.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it lives in lowland forest and forest edges on both slopes, from sea level up to about 1,200 meters. It is more common along rivers and mangroves on the Pacific slope from Carara south to Panama.

On the Caribbean slope you can also find it, especially in open and semi-open areas. It occurs there and on the central and southern Pacific slope, in the lowlands and mid elevations.

When to see it

Breeding in Costa Rica is reported from December to March, and also in June. It is also described as a dry season breeder.

Similar birds

Costa Rica has three potoos, and the best way to separate them is by their very different voices. Northern Potoo is almost identical, but it is found only in Guanacaste in the northwest, so range and voice separate them. Great Potoo (leona) is much larger and paler. By day Common Potoo looks like a huge nightjar but sits upright, and owls have rounder heads and shorter tails.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

Costa Ricans mainly call it pájaro estaca (stake bird) or pájaro palo (stick bird), both from its habit of sitting upright on a stump or branch tip. The potoo family also goes by leona and bruja (witch), depending on species and region. In Sabanillas de Acosta some villagers call this bird bruja, because its strange night call had never been linked to any known animal.

Status and conservation

Resident (R) on the AOCR list, generally uncommon but locally more frequent in the Térraba region, and Least Concern for the IUCN.

Photography tips

For distant day roosts, a spotting scope gives good views, and a 400 to 600 mm telephoto lens suits photography. At a roost beside a road, keep a safe distance, which matters most when a chick is present. Use lights sparingly and follow your guide's instructions.