Spot the bird! Camouflaged creature stumps predators by blending in with a wooden fence post
- The potoo bird stands on a wooden post in Brazil and is perfectly camouflaged
- When it flies away it leaves an egg behind that it has been sitting on to protect
- In more footage, the egg hatches and stands on the post beside its mother
This is the moment a bird stands completely still and baffles predators by blending in with its surroundings.
Footage shows the great potoo bird standing on a wooden fence post perfectly camouflaged into the material in Brazil.
The video, taken by Vanderlei Benites Scalabrim, shows the bird standing perfectly still with its beak in the air.
Footage shows the great potoo bird standing on a wooden fence post perfectly camouflaged into the material in Brazil, before flying off and leaving an egg behind
The animal eventually leaps from the post and flies away, leaving a small egg perched on top.
On the screen, the words ‘sometime later’ appear in Portuguese, and the video then shows the hatched bird.
The pair stand on the same wooden pillar together, keeping still and blending in with their surroundings.
On screen, it says: ‘The puppy is already big’ as the young potoo has grown so much since the last clip.
The video shows the hatched egg standing with its mother on the same wooden fence post as it was at the start of the video
The video was uploaded on January 16 2015 and has recently resurfaced online.
The common potoo is a nocturnal species that lives in the Southern Hemisphere and uses camouflage to hide from its predators.
It has eyes that take up much of its skull, giving it excellent night vision, while slits in the eyelids help it to sense the movement of predators even while asleep.
The common potoo is a nocturnal species has eyes that take up much of its skull, giving it excellent night vision (file image)
They typically rest on broken tree branches or wooden fence posts and do not build nests.
The great potoo is a world leader at pretending to be a tree stump, spending most of its time perched upright on branches.
The birds are about 38cm long and are a grey brown colour, which help them blend in with their surroundings.