All species › Gamebirds › Guans, curassows and chachalacas › Dusky-legged Guan
Dusky-legged Guan | Penelope obscura
Grijspootsjakohoen | Pava de monte | Jacuaçu
Dusky-legged Guan in the narrow sense is a guan of south-eastern South America, from the Atlantic Forest of Brazil to Uruguay and north-eastern Argentina. The Yungas Guan of Bolivia was formerly included in this species, so older records from the guide area almost always refer to that species. The name refers to the dark, greyish legs, which separate it from most other guans.
Voice
Loud, harsh, honking calls and a raucous cackle, mainly at dusk. At dawn a rattling wing-drumming.
Recording: João Vitor Oliveira de Souza — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
68–75 cm, a large, dark olive-brown guan with a long tail and a short crest. The neck, breast and mantle have narrow white feather edges, giving a streaked pattern; the belly is browner. The bare skin around the eye is grey to blue-grey and the dewlap is red. The legs are dark grey to blackish. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Yungas Guan Penelope bridgesi is very similar and also has dark legs; it differs in details of plumage and voice and lives in the Andes of Bolivia and Argentina. Rusty-margined Guan Penelope superciliaris is smaller, with rufous edges on the wing and reddish legs. Red-faced Guan Penelope dabbenei has red bare facial skin.
Habitat
Humid forest, montane forest with Araucaria, gallery forest and forest edges, from the lowlands into the mountains. It eats fruit, leaves and flowers, in trees and on the ground. The nest is a platform of twigs in a tree.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Not confirmed in the guide area. The few reports from Bolivia almost certainly refer to Yungas Guan; reports from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru are confusions or misidentifications. Outside the guide area in south-eastern Brazil, eastern Paraguay, Uruguay and north-eastern Argentina.
How and when to look
Any dark-legged guan seen in Bolivia is almost certainly a Yungas Guan; when in doubt, note elevation, locality and the colour of the legs and face, and record the voice.
Conservation status
Not evaluated in this circumscription. In the older, broader concept, including Yungas Guan, the species was listed as Least Concern. It suffers locally from hunting and deforestation.
Scientific name
Penelope obscura | Temminck, 1815
Temminck described the species in 1815 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Penelope was introduced in 1786 by Merrem. The genus name comes from Greek mythology: Penelope was the daughter of the Spartan king Icarius and the wife of Odysseus. The species name comes from Latin obscurus, 'dusky', for the dark plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Paraguay.