Brown Tinamou

About the Brown Tinamou

The brown tinamou (Crypturellus obsoletus) is a brownish ground bird found in humid lowland and montane forest in tropical and subtropical South America. All tinamous are usually treated in a single family (Tinamidae) and, contrary to traditional classifications, they are embedded within the group known as ratites, most closely related to the extinct moa of New Zealand. However, unlike ratites (ostriches, rheas, moa, kiwis, emus, cassowaries & elephantbirds), tinamous are capable of flight, although in general, they are not strong fliers. Different ratite lineages evolved separately from ancient flying birds, and tinamous are thought to most closely resemble these ancestral ratites.

Its distribution is highly disjunct and the subspecies, which quite probably represent more than one species, are distributed as follows: C. o. obsoletus, the nominate race, occurs in the Atlantic forest in southeastern Brazil, eastern Paraguay and Misiones, Argentina.

C. o. griseiventris occurs throughout the valley of Rio Tapajós, Brazil; southwestern Pará, southeastern Amazonas, and central Mato Grosso. C. o. hypochraceus occurs in upper Rio Madeira valley in central... Wikipedia →