Solitary Tinamou

The solitary tinamou (Tinamus solitarius) is a genus of ground bird paleognath. The species is native to the eastern Brazilian Atlantic Forest. Both tinamou are of the Tinamidae family, which are thus ratites in the broader scheme. Tinamous, like other ratites, can float but they aren't fast fliers in general. The ratites are the nearest living relative of these birds, coming from prehistoric aerial birds and tinamos. The bird was historically split into two subspecies: T. s. In northeast Brazil, Pernambucensis, and T. s. Solitarius found in extreme Argentina and southern Paraguay. However, the former turned out not to be distinct from the species called, but instead to be true species displaying a strange coloured morph that is now understood to occur elsewhere. The back colour ranges extensively from green to black, and the level of plumage colour of the lower neck differs as well. In those cases the black barring is more or less serious. Pernambucensis refers to the much barring yellower birds, especially on the back. The solitary tinamou is a large brownish black tinamou, which is heavily barred. Its back, breast, and flanks are brown, white in the stomach. It has a dark brown crown on its yellowish head and neck, and a white throat on the neck side which coincides with a prominent buff stripe. Its average height is 45 cm. It is present in southeast Bahia, east Minas Gerais, Espírito Santo, Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, east Mato Grosso do Sul, Paraná, Santa Catarina and north Rio Grande do Sul. This is also present in the province of Misiones, in southeastern Paraguay, and in far-northeastern Argentina. It lays strange shaped eggs with a flat, light shell, and eats fruits and seeds from the forest, or low plants, unlike other tinamous ones. Males can incubate the eggs in a nest on the ground and raise the young only for a brief period of time before they are independent.]The solitary tinamou can be found in wet tropical lowland forests and montane forests up to 1,200 m. This readily inhabits secondary forests, which may not be rare in heavily degraded areas, rather tolerating selective deforestation. Large tropical cultivations are unknown. Yet the birds can be popular enough to survive any fire, e.g. in a mosaic of cabruca smallholder plantations, interspersed with secondary growth of thick Marantaceae caeté and bamboo Merostachys understore, as well as higher Guadua bamboo and full-grown palms. In the ecotone of the little-disturbed Thick Ombrophyllous Montane Forest, flowering tree-fragment colonies can occur as low as 1,000 acres. Currently it is affected by continuing deforestation caused by urbanisation, industrialization, agricultural extension and related road development. It, too, is being destroyed without yielding. Accordingly, it is classified by the IUCN as a Near Threatened Species, with an area of 990,000 km2 it can quickly become threatened. Historically, the species was known as pernambucensis, and is now very scarce or even extirpated. Historically, those northern birds have always been very rare, with no more than 6 museum collections likely. It has been acknowledged that it is not difficult to move this population to the correct habitat. Solitary tinamous continued to survive in numbers on a part of 1,500 hectares of land where they had not been able to live first. It is not known to be endangered worldwide by IUCN. A rare and hard-to-see resident of southeastern Brazil, eastern Paraguay, and northeastern Argentina, that large and elusive tinamou. It is located in intact, closed-canopy lowland evergreen rainforest and higher secondary forest, increasingly threatened by urbanisation, agrarian development, and industrialization within its area. Because it is elusive and not always vocal, only a combination of caution, determination, observance and serendipity allows a glimpse of a Solitary Tinamou which makes it one of the most rewarding and memorable birds to be seen within its range.