All species › Woodpeckers and allies › New World barbets › Red-headed Barbet
Red-headed Barbet | Eubucco bourcierii
Roodkopbaardvogel | Barbudo cabecirrojo | Capitão-de-cabeça-vermelha
The Red-headed Barbet is the barbet of the humid montane forests of the northern Andes. Male and female differ strongly: the male has a red head and breast, the female a blue face. It travels through the canopy with mixed tanager flocks and searches mainly in clusters of dead leaves for insects.
Voice
Rather quiet. The song is a soft, low, frog-like trill; also short, hoarse calls.
Recording: José María Loaiza B. — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
16 cm, stocky, with a thick, pale, yellowish-green bill. The male has an all-scarlet head, throat and breast, with a narrow black edge around the base of the bill and a narrow, bluish-white band on the nape; the breast grades into an orange and then yellowish belly with green streaks on the flanks, and the upperparts are green. The female has a black forehead, blue cheeks, a golden-yellow to olive-green crown, a greyish throat and a yellow-orange breast. Juveniles resemble the female.
Confusion species
Versicolored Barbet Eubucco versicolor replaces it further south in the Andes of Peru and Bolivia; the male has blue on the head and a different breast pattern. Lemon-throated Barbet Eubucco richardsoni lives lower, in the Amazonian lowlands; the male has a black face and a lemon-yellow throat. Toucan Barbet Semnornis ramphastinus is larger, with a grey breast and a black crown, and lives only on the western slope.
Habitat
Humid montane forest, cloud forest and upper foothill forest, forest edges and tall secondary forest, mostly between 1000 and 2400 m, locally from about 400 m. It forages in the middle canopy, often in mixed flocks, pulling insects and spiders from dead leaves; it also eats much fruit. It nests in a cavity in dead wood.
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 all three Andean ranges and on the Pacific slope. In Ecuador on the western and eastern slopes. In Peru in the north, on the eastern slope of the Andes north and west of the Marañón. Absent from Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in Costa Rica, Panama and western Venezuela.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Follow mixed flocks along forest edges and forest roads in montane forest, for example around Mindo and on the eastern slope along the road to Cosanga. Watch for birds working into dead-leaf clusters.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The species has a large range and tolerates edges and secondary forest, but disappears where montane forest is cleared completely.
Scientific name
Eubucco bourcierii | (de Lafresnaye, 1845)
De Lafresnaye described the species in 1845 as Micropogon Bourcierii; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Eubucco was introduced in 1850 by Bonaparte. The genus name combines Greek eu, 'good' or 'true', with the genus name Bucco (Latin bucca, 'cheek'). The species name honours Jules Bourcier (1797–1873), a French naturalist and hummingbird specialist. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bogotá, Colombia.