Return of Bird of the Week: Red-headed Barbet

There is another family of big-billed New World birds that are related to the Toucans and Toucanets you’ve seen in recent weeks. The New World has about 15 species of Barbets. Unlike Toucans and Toucanets, Barbets are found in the Old World as well, although they are not close relatives..

Red-headed Barbet Male, Ecuador

You can see the family resemblance, which extends to diet as well. Red-headed Barbets eat fruit and nuts, much like their bigger-billed cousins.

This photo also illustrates the challenges of photographing this canopy species: they are often, maybe usually, high in the canopy, and photos have to deal with the bright sky and the dark understory. One way to try to manage the problem is to find something dark to put in the background. Like a large leaf. You can also see that it is only marginally successful.

Red-headed Barbet Female, Ecuador

Unlike Toucans and Toucanets, Barbets are sexually dimorphic, as you can see in the photo of the pretty lady above. There may be as many as six subspecies of Red-headed Barbets. Based on the absence of orange on the breast of the male, WC would guess this is the aequitorialis subspecies, but it’s a guess at best.

This species is widely distributed, ranging from Honduras to southern Ecuador. It depends on the big trees of primary forest for nest cavities (excavated by woodpeckers) and the loss of the big trees limits its ability to reproduce. Still, it is officially a “species of least concern.”

For more bird photographs, please visit Frozen Feather Images.

Comments

comments