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Red-throated Piping Guan | Pipile cujubi
Roodkeelgoean | Pava cuyubí | Cujubi
The Red-throated Piping Guan is the south-eastern counterpart of the Blue-throated Piping Guan: a black guan with a white crest and white wing patches, but with a red dewlap. It lives mainly in Brazil south of the Amazon and reaches the guide area only in north-eastern Bolivia.
Voice
A series of thin, rising whistles, mainly around sunrise, similar to those of Blue-throated Piping Guan. During display flights a rattling wing sound.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
69 cm, with a rather small head, a long tail and red legs. The plumage is black with a blue to green gloss. A shaggy white crest covers the crown and hindneck. A large white patch marks the wing coverts. The bare skin around the eye is white to pale blue; the dewlap is bright red, sometimes with some blue at the base. The bill is blue with a black tip. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Blue-throated Piping Guan Pipile cumanensis has a dark blue dewlap; in north-eastern Bolivia both occur and the colour of the dewlap is the best feature. Spix's Guan Penelope jacquacu is brown, with a smaller red dewlap and no white crest or wing patches. Wattled Curassow Crax globulosa and Razor-billed Curassow Mitu tuberosum are heavier and walk mainly on the forest floor.
Habitat
Tall forest along rivers, várzea and gallery forest, also humid terra firme forest and forest edge in the lowlands, below about 500 m. It lives in pairs or small groups in the treetops and eats mainly fruit, also flowers and leaves. The nest is 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
In Bolivia only in the lowlands of the north-east, in eastern Beni and northern Santa Cruz. Absent from Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in much of Brazil south of the Amazon, from the Rio Madeira to Pará and Maranhão.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the early morning, search the tops of tall trees along rivers in north-eastern Bolivia, for example in and around Noel Kempff Mercado National Park.
Conservation status
Vulnerable. Declining through hunting and deforestation in the southern Amazon; it holds up well only in large, protected forest areas.
Scientific name
Pipile cujubi | (Pelzeln, 1858)
Pelzeln described the species in 1858 as Penelope cujubi; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Pipile was introduced in 1856 by Bonaparte. The genus name goes back to German Pipen, 'piping' (compare Latin pipilare, 'to chirp'). Von Jacquin (1784) wrote that the bird owed its name among the Americans to its soft piping call. The species name comes from cujubi, a Tupi name for a piping guan. The specimen the first description was based on came from Pará, Brazil.