Vorstman's Guideto the birds of the Andes and West Coast

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Woodpeckers and allies | Piciformes

Spechtachtigen | Pícidos y afines | Woodpeckers and allies

The foot has two toes forward and two back, a grip that lets the bird clamp itself vertically to a trunk or sit firmly on a branch. In the Andes and along the west coast the order comprises four families with 113 species in all: the woodpeckers and piculets, the toucans, aracaris and mountain-toucans, the New World barbets, and the Toucan Barbet, the only member of its family, which lives solely in the cloud forest of western Colombia and western Ecuador. Outwardly they have little in common, but all nest in cavities: woodpeckers and barbets excavate their own in dead or soft wood, while toucans usually take over a natural rot hole or an old woodpecker hole; the Andean Flicker of the treeless highlands digs its hole in an earth bank. No nest material is brought in, and the white eggs lie on the bare floor or on a few wood chips. The young hatch blind and naked and have a horny pad on the heel joint on which they rest on that rough floor. Both parents incubate and feed. Nearly all species are resident.

Families in this order

  • New World barbets | Capitonidae14 speciesA 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.
  • Toucan-barbets | Semnornithidae1 speciesA small family of two species, one of which occurs in the region: the Toucan Barbet, found only in cloud forest on the western slope of the Andes in Colombia and Ecuador. Toucan-barbets stand between the New World barbets and the toucans and were recognised as a family of their own only on the basis of DNA studies. They are stocky, large-headed birds with a short, heavy bill; in this species it is pale with a dark tip. The plumage is colourful: a black head with a white stripe behind the eye, a blue-grey throat, a bright red breast, an olive-brown back and a yellow rump, and the male has a small black tuft on the nape. They feed mainly on fruit and berries, supplemented with insects, and forage in pairs or small groups in the middle and upper levels of the forest. Pairs sing in duet with loud, hollow, honking notes. They nest in cavities they excavate themselves in dead or rotting wood, and young from earlier broods sometimes help to raise the chicks. The eggs are white. Trapping for the cage-bird trade and forest loss have caused the species to decline.
  • Toucans | Ramphastidae32 speciesThirty-two species in five genera live in the area of this guide: the large toucans of the genus Ramphastos, the slimmer, group-living aracaris of the lowlands, the green toucanets of the genus Aulacorhynchus in foothill and cloud forest, the grey-blue mountain-toucans of the genus Andigena high in the Andean forest and the small Selenidera toucanets, whose males have a yellow ear patch. The huge, often brightly coloured bill is lighter than it looks: beneath a thin horny sheath lies a spongy network of bony struts filled with air. With it they reach fruit on slender twigs that would not bear their weight, and the richly supplied bill also helps to shed heat. The cutting edges are serrated and the tongue is long, narrow and frayed at the edges like a feather. The foot is zygodactyl. Toucans eat mainly fruit, which they swallow with a toss of the head, but also insects, lizards and the eggs and young of other birds. The voice is hardly musical: croaking, rasping or yelping calls that carry far. They sleep in tree holes with the tail folded over the back, and aracaris share a roost hole as a whole group. The nest is a cavity in a tree, often an old woodpecker hole, with two to four white eggs.
  • Woodpeckers | Picidae66 speciesA straight, chisel-shaped bill and a skull built to absorb the blows: the base of the bill rests on spongy bone, heavy neck muscles drive and steer the stroke, and the nostrils sit behind small covering feathers that keep out dust. The tongue is extremely long and tipped with barbs or sticky saliva; it is carried on two slender elongated bones that curve round the skull and push it far beyond the bill. In most species the tail feathers are stiff and pointed and serve as a third point of support in climbing, which goes up the trunk in short jerks, while the flight is undulating, a few beats and a dip on closed wings. Instead of song they drum: a fast series of blows on a resonant branch that announces the territory and draws a mate.