New World barbets | Capitonidae

Amerikaanse baardvogels | Cabezones | New World barbets

A family of tropical South America that is well represented in the region: this guide includes fourteen species in two genera, in humid lowland forest of the Amazonian foothills and the Chocó, in foothill forest and up into the cloud forest on the Andean slopes. They are stocky, short-tailed birds with a large head and a thick, conical bill, related to the toucans and woodpeckers and, like them, with a zygodactyl foot, two toes forward and two back. The plumage is colourful, with red, yellow, orange and black, and male and female often differ clearly; in the Red-headed Barbet the male has a bright red head, the female a head marked with blue and green. They eat ripe fruit and insects and often join mixed foraging flocks in the canopy. There they like to probe dead, curled leaves and clumps of moss for invertebrates, sometimes clinging upside down to do so. The voice is a low, dry rattle or a series of short, hollow notes. The nest is a cavity they excavate themselves in rotten wood, unlined, with white eggs.