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Channel-billed Toucan | Ramphastos vitellinus
Groefsnaveltoekan | Tucán piquiacanalado
The Channel-billed Toucan is the only toucan in the region and occurs only in Trinidad, home to the nominate subspecies Ramphastos vitellinus vitellinus, as in north-eastern South America. Distinctive features are the large bill and the croaking call, often given from a high bare branch above the canopy. It is absent from Tobago.
Voice
A croaking, repeated kree-ok kree-ok, given while bobbing the head and bill; mainly in the morning and towards dusk, carrying far. Also short, dry rattling notes.
Recording: Tristan Guillebot de Nerville — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
46–48 cm, of which the bill is 9–14 cm. The plumage is mostly black. Throat and upper breast are white, the centre of the breast yellow-orange, with a broad red band below. Uppertail and undertail coverts are red. Bare blue skin surrounds the eye. The bill is black, with a pale blue band at the base and a groove along the top of the upper mandible. The sexes are alike; the male has a slightly longer bill.
Confusion species
No other toucan or aracari occurs in Trinidad. With its size, black body and huge bill the species cannot be confused with any other bird in the region.
Habitat
The canopy of moist and semi-evergreen forest and hill forest, especially in the Northern Range, as well as larger forest tracts in central and southern Trinidad; also tall secondary forest and forest edges. It eats mainly fruit, as well as insects and sometimes eggs and young of other birds. It flies from crown to crown with alternating flaps and glides. It nests in a natural tree hole, high in a tree.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In the region only in Trinidad, as a fairly scarce resident of forested areas. Not in Tobago. Outside the region in Venezuela, the Guianas and the Amazon basin of Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia, with an isolated population in the Atlantic Forest of Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best early in the morning at lookouts over forested valleys in the Northern Range, where the birds sit and call on bare treetop branches. The call is usually the first sign; scanning the highest bare branches nearby then pays off.
Conservation status
Not listed as threatened in the data used here. Across its range the species is declining through deforestation in Amazonia, and birds are hunted locally and trapped for the cage-bird trade. In Trinidad it depends on continuous forest.
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. Ramphastos comes from Greek rhamphēstēs 'snouted', from rhamphē 'bill', after the enormous bill. vitellinus is Latin for 'egg-yolk-coloured', from vitellus 'yolk', after the orange-yellow breast. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.