Spix's guan – Our Tambopata jungle is a refuge for more than 600 bird species
22 December 2025 (478 visits)Spix’s guan (Penelope jacquacu) is a sedentary, or resident species, here in the remote Amazon rainforest of southeastern Peru we work to protect from our jungle lodge base. And this guan is just one of more than 600 bird species that are able to thrive in the government protected Tambopata National Reserve and our own Tambopata Private Conservation Area, where we offer our guided Amazon jungle tours to nature-loving travelers from all over the world.
This tree-dwelling bird spends most of its life in or just below the rainforest canopy. It is often spotted by our guests during trail walking excursions, and can also often be heard, with its strange yelping call familiar to all our expert local naturalist guides.
Spix’s guan is named after Johan Baptist Ritter von Spix, a German naturalist who identified and collected specimens of the bird during his 1817 expedition to the Amazon rainforest in Brazil.
Found in the rainforests of Peru, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guyana, Suriname and Venezuela, while it is classified as of Least Concern by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN), it is thought that its numbers are decreasing across much of it range, due to hunting by humans for food. Here in Tambopata, where hunting is banned in our protected forests, it has found a safe refuge.
Spix’s guan is around the size and weight of a turkey. It has brownish, speckled plumage, and is easily identified by the bright red flap of skin below its beak, known to birdwatching enthusiasts as a dewlap. It can be spotted foraging singly or in small family groups, mostly between the mid- and upper-canopy levels of the rainforest, although it will occasionally descend to ground level. Its diet consists mainly of fruits and seeds, and this means that sightings by our guides and guests in the forest around our lodge become more frequent in the rainy season, when trees are in fruit.
