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The spectacular Andean cock-of-the-rock is a large cotinga that has a lek-based mating system: males gather together in noisy groups to court the much less colorful females. They are cloud-forest birds found in dense forests along the eastern Andean slopes in northern South America. Some populations are orange; others (like these) are an intense orange-red (a second, slightly different species is found farther north). Most of these were photographed at the aptly-named Cock-of-the-Rock lodge, at about 1500 m elevation on the Manu Road in eastern Peru (the species is unofficially the national bird of Peru); others were in the Central Andes in Colombia. |
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