Tropical Toucans
by Les Beletsky
August 1998
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Toucans
Excerpted from: Costa Rica: The Ecotravellers' Wildlife Guide, Academic Press, 1998.
Spectacular.
No other word fits them - toucans are spectacular
animals. Their shape, brilliant coloring, and tropical quintessence make
them one of the most popular "poster animals" for the tropical forests of
the Americas and one most visitors want to see. It's hardly surprising,
therefore, that the logos of several conservation organizations and tour
companies feature toucans. The toucan family, Ramphastidae, is classified
with the woodpeckers, and contains about 40 species - the toucans and the
usually smaller toucanets and aracaris (AH-rah-SAH-reez); all are
restricted to the American tropics. Six species occur in Costa Rica.
The first sighting of toucans in the wild is always exhilarating -
the large size of the bird, the bright colors, the enormous, almost
cartoonish bill. Toucans are usually first noticed flying from treetop to
treetop in small groups. Your eyes immediately lock onto the flight
silhouette; something is different here! As one observer put it, it looks
as if the bird is following its own bill in flight (J. C. Kricher 1989).
The effect of the bill seeming to lead the bird is that toucans appear
unbalanced while flying. The bird's most distinguishing feature - its
colorful, disproportionately large bill - is actually light, mostly
hollow, and used for cutting down and manipulating the diet staple, tree
fruit.
NATURAL HISTORY
Ecology & Behavior. Toucans are gregarious forest birds, usually observed
in flocks of 3 to 12. They follow each other in strings from one tree to
another, usually staying in the high canopy (a toucan only occasionally
flies down to feed at shrubs, or to pluck a snake or a lizard from the
forest floor). The birds are playful, grasping each other's bills in
apparent contests, and tossing fruit to each other. Toucans are primarily
fruit-eaters, preferring the darkest, so ripest, fruit. Their long bill
allows them to perch on heavier, stable branches and reach a distance for
hanging fruits. They snip the fruit off, hold it at the tip of the bill,
and then, with a forward flip of the head, toss the fruit into the air and
into their throats. (Seems, we humans think, an inefficient eating
method, but the toucans do quite nicely with it.) Toucans also increase
their protein intake by consuming the occasional insect, spider, or small
reptile, or even bird eggs or nestlings. (I will never forget my surprise
when I lifted my binoculars to a toucan high up in an Argentine tree and
watched it snatch in its bill a big black tarantula, then hit its bill
against a heavy branch, the better to knock the spider senseless, then
gulp it down.) Sometimes individual fruit trees are defended by a mated
toucan pair from other toucans or from other frugivorous birds - defended
by threat displays and even, against other toucans, by bill clashes.
CHESTNUT-MANDIBLED TOUCANS , the largest in Costa Rica, may
"parasitize" the slightly smaller KEEL-BILLED TOUCAN: the
larger bird follows the smaller, then chases the smaller away after it
succeeds at locating a fruit-filled tree.
Breeding. Breeding is during the dry season. Toucans nest (and some
sleep) in tree cavities, either natural ones or those hollowed out by
woodpeckers, in either live or dead trees. Nests can be any height above
the ground, up to 30 meters (100 ft) or more. Both sexes incubate and
feed the 2 to 4 young. Toucans are apparently monogamous. Some species,
such as the COLLARED ARACARI, seem to breed cooperatively;
that is, other family members, in addition to the mother and father, help
raise the young in a single nest.
Ecological interactions. Small fruit seeds pass unharmed through toucan
digestive tracts and large seeds are regurgitated, also unharmed. Thus,
these frugivores aid in the dispersal of tree seeds, and, together with
other fruit-eaters, are responsible for the positions of some forest
trees. In other words, many forest trees grow not where a parent tree
drops its seeds, but where frugivorous birds do so.
LORE AND NOTES
Toucans are commonly known in many areas of the Neotropics as
"Dios te de," (God gives it to you), apparently because the
three-syllable call of the CHESTNUT-MANDIBLED TOUCAN sounds like this
expression. Toucan feathers have long been used as ornaments. Alfred
Russell Wallace, co-formulator with Darwin of theory of evolution,
visited South America from 1848 to 1852, noting in his journals that
dancers in Brazilian villages commonly wore hats with red and yellow
toucan feathers.
STATUS
Toucans are common residents in the various regions in which they
occur, except where there is extensive deforestation. None of the family
are currently threatened in Costa Rica. Some toucans, e.g., the
CHESTNUT-MANDIBLED, have suffered substantial population declines in
heavily deforested areas of Central America, for instance, in some regions
of Panama. Also, some toucan species may be scarce locally due to
hunting. Several toucans, including the KEEL-BILLED, are CITES listed
but, rather than being immediately threatened, they are listed because
they are considered "look-alikes" of threatened species, and so they need
to be monitored during international trade.
This is an excerpt from the author's upcoming
Costa Rica: The
Ecotravellers' Wildlife Guide, (Academic Press, 1998). Contact the author via
email at ecotravel8@aol.com. Les also wrote the
article on Conservation in Costa Rica and Tropical Tanagers.
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