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Channel-billed Toucan | Ramphastos vitellinus
Groefsnaveltoekan | Tucán piquiacanalado | Tucano-de-bico-preto
The Channel-billed Toucan is a medium-sized toucan of the Amazon forest, clearly smaller than White-throated Toucan, with which it often occurs. In the guide area the white-throated form culminatus occurs, formerly treated as a separate species. The name refers to the grooves at the base of the upper mandible.
Voice
A croaking, frog-like krreek or krrek-krrek, repeated at length, often in the early morning from a high branch while the head swings up and down. Also dry bill-clattering.
Recording: Daan van der Hoeven — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
46–48 cm. The plumage is black, with a white throat and upper breast that turn yellow lower down and are bordered by a red band across the breast. Both the uppertail and the undertail coverts are red. The bill is black, with a narrow yellow ridge along the culmen and a yellow and blue band at the base. Bare blue skin surrounds the eye. The sexes are alike, but the female has a shorter bill. Elsewhere in the range other forms have an orange-yellow throat and breast.
Confusion species
White-throated Toucan Ramphastos tucanus has the same pattern, but is larger, with a clearly longer bill, yellow uppertail coverts and a yelping call instead of croaks; hybrids occur. Yellow-throated Toucan Ramphastos ambiguus on the east slope of the Andes has a yellow throat and breast and a yellow upper mandible. Toco Toucan Ramphastos toco in Bolivia has an orange bill and lives in semi-open country.
Habitat
Humid lowland forest, both terra firme and várzea, forest edges and riverine forest; mainly in the canopy. Usually below 1000 m, locally higher in the foothills. It lives in pairs or small groups. It eats mainly fruit, but also insects, small vertebrates and the eggs and young of other birds. It nests in a tree cavity.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia in the lowlands east of the Andes. In Ecuador in the eastern lowlands and foothills. In Peru in the Amazonian lowlands. In Bolivia in the northern and central lowlands. Absent west of the Andes and from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in Venezuela, the Guianas and Amazonian Brazil, with a separate form in the Atlantic Forest of eastern Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the same places as White-throated Toucan, especially along rivers and from canopy towers in the lowlands. Note the smaller size and the croaking call, which can be heard among the yelps of White-throated Toucan.
Conservation status
Not Evaluated in this species limit. Still widespread, but deforestation in Amazonia and hunting are reducing numbers.
Scientific name
Ramphastos vitellinus | Lichtenstein, 1823
Lichtenstein described the species in 1823 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Ramphastos was introduced in 1758 by Linnaeus. The genus name comes from Greek rhamphēstēs, 'snouted, large-billed', from rhamphē, 'bill'. The species name vitellinus is Latin for 'egg-yolk yellow', from vitellus, 'yolk', after the yellow or orange throat and breast. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.