Agami Heron - Agamia agami

Agami Heron Agamia agami

Brazilian name: garça-da-mata

Agami Heron, Brazil, Sept 2000 - click for larger image

Pixaim, Mato Grosso, Brazil
September 2000 and December 2006

The Agami Heron is a shy, solitary bird. It hardly ever comes out into the open and is most frequently found at the water's edge under overhanging vegetation. It rarely, if ever, is to be found wading in the open.

Steve Hilty, in his fascinating book, "Birds of Tropical America", Page 28, explains that this habitat requirement is one of the reasons for its apparent rarity.

I was very lucky on the first occasion that I saw this bird because it flew out from its cover as we watched and it went about 20 m across the river to perch in a tree on the other bank. This was at about 5:00 pm so the sun was getting quite low, hence the rather reddish tinge to the light.

In the first photograph you should be able to make out the very short tibia which gives the bird a rather unusual stance.

Photos 6 and 7 show a juvenile bird on the banks of the Pixaim River.

The Brazilians call this bird a "Soco beija-flor" or Humming-bird Heron. Whether this is because of its very long bill or because of its magnificent colours, I don't know, but the name would be valid on either count

It is sufficiently distinctive to be classified as a separate genus

The name Agami comes from a Cayenne Indian name for a forest bird.

There are illustrations in HBW, Volume 1, Pages 378, 403 and 414; Hilty & Brown, Plate 2; and Sick, Plate 3.

There is a recording and a distribution map on xeno-canto.

Juvenile Agami Heron, Pantanal, Mato Grosso, Brazil, December 2006 - click for larger image

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