All species › Gamebirds › Guans, curassows and chachalacas › Horned Curassow
Horned Curassow | Pauxi unicornis
Hoornhokko | Paujil unicornio | Mutum-de-chifre
The Horned Curassow is a large curassow with an upright, grey-blue horn on the forehead. It occurs only in the Andean foothills of Bolivia. The scientific name unicornis means 'unicorn'. The birds of the Cerros del Sira in Peru were formerly included in this species and are now regarded as the separate Sira Curassow.
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Voice
The male gives a very low, humming mmm-mmm, mainly in the dark before dawn; the sound carries far but is hard to locate. Its vocalizations are otherwise little described.
Recording: Rob Gordijn — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
85–95 cm. Glossy black with a white lower belly and undertail and a white tail tip; the bill is red, the legs reddish. On the forehead stands a long, more or less cylindrical, grey-blue horn that points obliquely upwards. There is no crest. The sexes are alike. Young birds have a shorter horn.
Confusion species
Sira Curassow Pauxi koepckeae has a shorter, rounded casque and lives only in Peru; their ranges do not overlap. Razor-billed Curassow Mitu tuberosum lives lower in the Amazonian lowlands and has a deep red bill without a horn and a chestnut lower belly. Guans such as Spix's Guan Penelope jacquacu are smaller, brown, have a red dewlap and are more often in the trees.
Habitat
Dense humid foothill and lower montane forest on steep slopes and in ravines, roughly between 450 and 1200 m. Forages mainly on the forest floor for fallen fruit, seeds and nuts. Its breeding biology is little known; as in related curassows, the nest is presumably a platform of twigs in a tree.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
Endemic to Bolivia: the eastern slope of the Andes in Cochabamba and Santa Cruz, with known sites in Amboró, Carrasco and Isiboro Sécure national parks. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador and Peru.
How and when to look
The species lives in remote, steep forest and is wary because of hunting. Records come mainly from the remote parts of Amboró and Carrasco; in the early morning the low humming of the male is the best clue.
Conservation status
Endangered. The population is small and fragmented; reliable numbers are lacking. The main threats are hunting and the conversion of forest to farmland, including coca, and new roads that further fragment its habitat.
Scientific name
Pauxi unicornis | Bond & Meyer de Schauensee, 1939
Bond & Meyer de Schauensee described the species in 1939 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Pauxi was introduced in 1813 by Temminck. The genus name comes from 'Pauxi' of Nieremberg (1635) and Hernández (1651), after Spanish paují, 'peacock', a name for various large gamebirds in tropical America. The species name comes from Latin unicornis, 'one-horned', for the horn-like casque on the head. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bolivia.