Return of Bird of the Week: Rufous-headed Chachalaca

In WC’s experience, at least, this is the flightiest, the most easily spooked of the Cracids that WC has seen. You can see some motion blur in the head in this photo; even at ISO1600, the fastest WC’s Olympus E-3 could shoot without very serious grain, the shutter speed was only 1/200th of a second at f7.1. The bird’s head came up, it turned away and ran down the branch, disappearing in a tangle of liana vines. There were five birds in the tree; this is the best photo. Sigh. You woudn’t know it from this photo, but this is…