The Amazon River Basin contains the greatest diversity of birds in the world. South America is often called the "bird continent"
and for good reason since it contains one-third of the total number of species in the world. It also has an extremely high rate
endemism with over 85 percent of the bird species of South America being found there and no where else. Peru alone is home
to about 1,700 species of birds.
Consequently most of this diversity is due to the rainforests of the continent. The main river ecosystem contains mostly familiar
water birds with scattered oddities such as the sun bittern and horned screamer. This is not the case when you step into the
rainforest itself, though the diversity of bird life may not be intially apparent. The Amazon Rainforest is home to such birds as
tanagers, cotingas, trogons, toucans, parrots, hoatzins, hummingbirds, antbirds, jacamars, motmots, manakins, and many more.
Most of these families are confined to the Neotropical Region ( Central and South America ) reflecting the uniqueness of the
Amazon Basin's bird life.
Though these birds are facing many perils in the rainforest, numbers continue to fall mostly due to deforestation, especially
since many species of birds found here have extremely confined ranges such as only a valley or a ridge of mountains making
extinction much more likely for species such as the Multicolored Tanager ( Chlorochrysa nitidissma ). Sadly, very little is known
about the behavior of many of these bird species and many still have not been discovered.
