Guans, curassows and chachalacas | Cracidae

Hokko's en chachalaca's | Crácidos

These are tree-dwelling gamebirds of dense, humid thicket and riverside woodland, spending most of the day high in the branches and moving about there by walking and clambering rather than scratching over the ground. Food consists largely of leaves, buds, flowers and fruit, plucked from the twig and swallowed whole; large seeds pass through undamaged, so the birds help sow the woodland they live in. In the half-light of early morning one bird starts a harsh, three-part shout, the whole group takes it up, and the racket rolls on for minutes and carries for kilometres across the scrub; in part of the family the windpipe is lengthened and lies in a loop under the skin of the breast, which gives the call its carrying power. The nest is a thin, see-through platform of twigs on a horizontal branch, with two or three rough white eggs. Within days the chicks have usable flight feathers and flutter after their parents up into the bushes, where they are fed bill to bill for weeks more.