Jocotoco Antpitta Grallaria ridgelyi

"A Melon with Pogo-stick legs" – a new bird to science

Jocotoco Antpitta, first discovered in what is now the Tapichalaca reserve. Doug Wechsler/© VIREO

When world-renowned ornithologist Bob Ridgely heard a distant, but strong hoot, not unlike that of an owl, he stopped in his tracks - this wasn't a sound he recalled. A couple of seconds later a big bird came crashing out of the undergrowth which he didn't recognise either. In fact, as he recalls, "It was stunningly different". It turned out to be a bird previously unknown to science – an entirely new and quite distinctive species of antpitta, whose distinctive call subsquently gave the bird its name.

Antpittas are shy, strange-Iooking birds with a round body usually the size and shape of a grapefruit, and legs which they use like pogo sticks to hop across the forest floor. They belong to the antbird family – so-called because some species follow army ants, picking at the smaller insects that the ants disturb as they march across the forest floor. The Jocotoco Antpitta (as it was to be called) is uncharacteristically large – about the size of a small melon – and how it avoided identification for so long remains a mystery.

Bob Ridgely and Lelis Navarette in the spot where the Jocotoco Antpitta was first discovered.

The photo below shows the exact spot where the Jocotoco Antpitta was first discovered by Bob Ridgely, a trail which is just off a road that is used for commercial transport too. But it is a highly secretive bird with a habitat limited to an altitude range of ca. 2700-2200m on the east slope of the Andes close to the Ecuador/Peru border. It is only found in wet moss-covered forest characterised by the presence of Chusquea bamboo and Silvery-leaved Cecropia trees.

At least a dozen pairs are now known to occupy the Cerro Tapichalaca Reserve that was established for them by the Jocotoco Foundation (Fundación Jocotoco) in 1998. The area of tropical Andes that the Fundación Jocotoco aim to protect, is known to contain a huge range of rare and endemic species, many of which may not have even been discovered yet, as has been proven by the Jocotoco Antpitta. This is just one of the many reasons why the World Land Trust's Ecuador project is so vitally important.

Please help save the habitat of the Antpitta, and other endangered Birds by making a donation to the Ecuador project today.

More Information on the Tropical Forest Project

To learn more about the Ecuador project visit the main project page: Help Save the Rainforests.