👻“Ghost-bird”
🇧🇷Urutau/Mãe-da-Lua
🇬🇧Common Potoo
📖(Nyctibius griseus)
In honor of this awesome square month (february 2026!) and its Friday the 13th, we decided to present to you guys the mysterious voice of the night, the nightmare of bugs and frogs, the scary cry of the dawn, your one and only: The Ghost-Bird! Seriously though, have you heard them vocalizing? Chills, literal chills. Maybe that explains the insane amount of Amerindian folklore surrounding this amazing bird, starting with its name “Urutau”. I really wish I had come up with that name (because it obviously rules), but the credit goes all to the indigenous people of South America, for their name means “ghost bird” in tupi. Legend is that a tupi girl fell in love with a guarani boy and they couldn't be together for their tribes were mortal enemies, so the girl ran into the woods and the loss of her great love turned her into a bird that sings its pain into the night, a painful “hu hu hu”. The urutau is fairly common across South America, but its population is decreasing both to habitat loss and also to stupid people thinking it is actually a bearer of misfortune. Lonely creatures of the darkness (omg batman?), they capture bugs and moths on flight, with a single TOOTH that helps catch the prey. During the day, they mostly stay on a branch, motionless and thanks to their THREE EYELIDS MAGIC EYE SYSTEM they can close their eyes and still see everything! Dope. Monogamous creatures, the couple cares equally for a single egg with lilac spots laid inside a branch. Anyway they are such awesome creatures with big beautiful yellow eyes. Big. Yellow.
Sources:
https://www.wikiaves.com.br/wiki/urutau
https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Urutau-comum
https://www.oiseaux.net/oiseaux/ibijau.gris.html
https://animalvivid.com/urutau-bird-20-incredible-facts/#easy-footnote-bottom-3-510337
