Animalia > Chordata > Aves > Steatornithiformes > Steatornithidae > Steatornis > Steatornis caripensis

Steatornis caripensis (Oilbird)

Wikipedia Abstract

The oilbird (Steatornis caripensis), locally known as the guácharo, is a bird species found in the northern areas of South America (including the island of Trinidad in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago). Nesting in colonies in caves, oilbirds are nocturnal feeders on the fruits of the oil palm and tropical laurels. They are the only nocturnal flying fruit-eating birds in the world (the kakapo is flightless). They forage at night, with specially adapted eyesight. However they navigate by echolocation in the same way as bats, and are one of the few kinds of birds known to do so. They produce a high-pitched clicking sound of around 2 kHz that is audible to humans.
View Wikipedia Record: Steatornis caripensis

EDGE Analysis

Uniqueness Scale: Similiar (0) 
38
 Unique (100)
Uniqueness & Vulnerability Scale: Similiar & Secure (0) 
55
 Unique & Vulnerable (100)
ED Score: 72.7679
EDGE Score: 4.30092
Learn more at EDGE of Existence programme

Attributes

Adult Weight [1]  408 grams
Male Weight [4]  410 grams
Breeding Habitat [2]  Tropical evergreen forests
Wintering Geography [2]  Non-migrartory
Wintering Habitat [2]  Tropical evergreen forests
Diet [3]  Frugivore
Diet - Fruit [3]  100 %
Forages - Canopy [3]  50 %
Forages - Mid-High [3]  50 %
Clutch Size [6]  3
Clutches / Year [4]  1
Fledging [4]  3 months 18 days
Incubation [5]  33 days
Maximum Longevity [5]  12 years
Nocturnal [3]  Yes

Ecoregions

Protected Areas

Important Bird Areas

Biodiversity Hotspots

Name Location Endemic Species Website
Tropical Andes Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Venezuela No

Prey / Diet

Prey / Diet Overlap

Range Map

External References

Citations

Attributes / relations provided by
♦ 1Sanft, K. 1970. Gewichte südamerikanischer Vögel-Nonpasseres. Beitr. Vogelkd. 16: 344–354
♦ 2Partners in Flight Avian Conservation Assessment Database, version 2017. Accessed on January 2018.
♦ 3Hamish Wilman, Jonathan Belmaker, Jennifer Simpson, Carolina de la Rosa, Marcelo M. Rivadeneira, and Walter Jetz. 2014. EltonTraits 1.0: Species-level foraging attributes of the world's birds and mammals. Ecology 95:2027
♦ 4Nathan P. Myhrvold, Elita Baldridge, Benjamin Chan, Dhileep Sivam, Daniel L. Freeman, and S. K. Morgan Ernest. 2015. An amniote life-history database to perform comparative analyses with birds, mammals, and reptiles. Ecology 96:3109
♦ 5del Hoyo, J., Elliott, A., Sargatal, J., Christie, D.A. & de Juana, E. (eds.). Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.
♦ 6Jetz W, Sekercioglu CH, Böhning-Gaese K (2008) The Worldwide Variation in Avian Clutch Size across Species and Space PLoS Biol 6(12): e303. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0060303
♦ 7THE DIET OF THE OILBIRD IN VENEZUELA, Carlos Bosque, Rudyard Ramírez & Domingo Rodríguez, ORNITOLOGIA NEOTROPICAL 6: 67-80, 1995
♦ 8Aguaruna Knowledge of Bird Foraging Ecology: A comparison with scientific data, Kevin Jernigan and Nico Dauphiné, Ethnobotany Research & Applications 6:093-106 (2008)
Ecoregions provided by World Wide Fund For Nature (WWF). WildFinder: Online database of species distributions, ver. 01.06 Wildfinder Database
Biodiversity Hotspots provided by Critical Ecosystem Partnership Fund
Abstract provided by DBpedia licensed under a Creative Commons License
Species taxanomy provided by GBIF Secretariat (2022). GBIF Backbone Taxonomy. Checklist dataset https://doi.org/10.15468/39omei accessed via GBIF.org on 2023-06-13; License: CC BY 4.0