Rusty-margined Guan

Fascinating facts about the Rusty-margined Guan

• At up to 73 cm long, the rusty-margined guan can stretch nearly the length of a school ruler, yet its weight ranges only between 750 g and 1 150 g.
• When it descends from its roosts, the bird may drop as much as 400 m (1 300 ft) to reach feeding grounds, a daily vertical commute that rivals a skyscraper’s height. Such elevation shifts show how it exploits both canopy and understory resources.
• A single study recorded fruit from 117 different plant species in its diet.
• The breeding window stretches from October to February in Argentina and from August to February in southeastern Brazil, during which the pair builds a stick platform nest lined with live and dead leaves and lays three eggs.
• The rusty-margined guan’s wing-whirring display and gruff barking call are used in its dense-habitat environment.

At a glance

About the Rusty-margined Guan

The rusty-margined guan (Penelope superciliaris) is a striking bird of the Cracidae family, measuring 55 to 73 cm in length. Its upperparts blend dark olive to brownish tones, while the wing coverts and scapulars are edged with the eponymous rust-red margins that give the species its name. A pale face is framed by a supercilium that varies from white to buff or ochre across subspecies, and a rusty belly mirrors the wing accents. Subspecies differ subtly: P. s. jacupemba is lighter overall, whereas P. s. major appears darker, and the nominate subspecies weighs 950–1 150 g, with the lighter P. s. jacupemba at 750–880 g. Across a vast range that includes Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil and Paraguay, this guan inhabits an eclectic mix of lowland habitats, from dense Amazonian forest and gallery woodlands to cerrado grasslands, caatinga scrub, mangroves, restinga dunes and even Eucalyptus plantations, occasionally climbing to 1 300 m in Brazil. It is essentially sedentary, roosting high and descending up to 400 m to feed, rarely venturing more than 20 m in flight. Feeding alone, in pairs, or in groups of up to ten, it forages 5–10 m above ground but will also feed on the forest floor, subsisting almost entirely on fruit, one study recorded fruit from 117 plant species, supplemented by occasional flowers, leaves and insects. A surprising trait is its wing-whirring display, a subtle sound that accompanies a gruff, bark-like call, likely used in alarm but still enigmatic to ornithologists.

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