Super star clusters(SSCs)in 40 nearby IRAS starburst-dominated galaxies(most of which are mergers and interacting LIRGs)are characterized through NIR AO-imaging with Gemini/ALTAIR/NIRI and VLT/NACO.The targets form the sample of the SUperNovae and starBursts in the InfraReD(SUNBIRD)survey: an ongoing project aimed at hunting missing optical CCSNe and to study the details of galaxy interactions and the triggering of extreme forms of star formation and the developing nuclear activity.Our analysis of the SSC K-band luminosity functions shows a power law distribution with index values ranging between 1.5 and 2.4 and an average value of 1.9.This is shallower than the average of 2.2 associated with normal spiral galaxies.Moreover,we report that the luminosities of the brightest SSCs scale with the high star formation rate of their hosts.The correlation has a steeper slope compared to the one with optical data at lower SFRs which could indicate a simple statistical effect,though physical interpretations should not be excluded.We finally combine the new NIR imaging with the HST archival data to derive preliminary results of the cluster ages and mass functions which are consistent with SSCs being good tracers of the host galaxy recent star formation activity.