Red-legged Seriema

About the Red-legged Seriema

The red-legged seriema (Cariama cristata), also known as the crested cariama and crested seriema, is a mostly predatory terrestrial bird in the seriema family (Cariamidae), included in the Gruiformes in the old polyphyletic circumscription but recently placed in a distinct order: Cariamiformes (along with three extinct families).

The red-legged seriema is widely distributed in South America, occurring in central and eastern Brazil through eastern Bolivia and Paraguay to Uruguay and central Argentina (south to La Pampa). Like the black-legged seriema, farmers often use them as guard animals to protect poultry from predators and sometimes human intruders.

The red-legged seriema was described in 1766 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the twelfth edition of his Systema Naturae. He coined the binomial name Palamedea cristata. The red-legged seriema is now the only species placed in the genus Cariama that was introduced by the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson in 1760. The specific epithet cristata is Latin for "crested", "plumed" or "tufted". The German naturalist Georg Marcgrave used the Latin word Cariama for the red-legged seriema in his Historia naturalis... Wikipedia →