For someone interested in birds, there is no place on earth that rivals the Amazon Rainforest for diversity. Roughly one in every ten bird species in the world is found in the Amazon basin, making it the world's richest regions in terms of bird life. Not only is the avifauna extremely rich, it is also highly distinctive.

Today the Neotropical realm, of which the Amazon is heartland, has more endemic families of birds than any other. Characteristic birds found only in the New World tropics and with particular abundance in the Amazon include the tinamous, the curassows, the hoatzin, the potoos, the jacamars, the puffbirds, the toucans, the woodcreepers, the antbirds, the cotingas and the manakins.

There are other types of bird flocks in the Amazon Rainforest that help explain why there are so many more species than in other forest around the world. They're known as "mixed species flocks", and there are two kinds. One type is found in the forest understory and the other in the canopy. In both cases there is a "core" of five to ten different species that spend their entire lives together.

As you walk through the Amazon Rainforest, you can go long stretches where there doesn't seem to be any bird activity. Suddenly, you come across an "explosion" of action, as dozens and dozens of birds of 30 species or more are encountered feeding in the understory or the canopy, moving in a wave through the vegetation.