Woodpeckers and allies | Piciformes

Families in this order

• New World barbets | Capitonidae2 speciesA family of tropical South America that reaches only the south of the region: this guide includes two species in two genera, in humid lowland and foothill forest of Costa Rica and Panama. 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 Prong-billed Barbet, found only in the humid montane forest of Costa Rica and western Panama. 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 the upper mandible ends in a forked tip that fits into a groove in the lower mandible, a shape whose function is still not well understood. The plumage is olive-brown with a golden or tawny breast, and the male has a glossy black tuft on the nape. They feed mainly on fruit and berries, supplemented with flowers and insects, and forage in small, noisy groups in the middle and upper levels of the forest. Pairs sing in duet with hollow, croaking notes. They nest and roost in cavities they excavate themselves in dead or rotting wood, and outside the breeding season several birds sometimes spend the night together in one hole. The eggs are white.
• Toucans | Ramphastidae6 speciesSix species in four genera live in Mexico and Central America: the large toucans of the genus Ramphastos, the slimmer, group-living aracaris, the green Northern Emerald Toucanet of montane forest and the Yellow-eared Toucanet in the far south. 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 | Picidae39 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.