All species › Woodpeckers and allies › Toucans › Keel-billed Toucan
Position in the tree Birds Aves › Birds with a flexible palate Neognathae › All other modern birds Neoaves › Landbirds Telluraves › Raptors, owls, kingfishers and woodpeckers Afroaves › Mousebirds, rollers and woodpeckers Coraciimorphae › Trogons and cavity nesters Cavitaves › Hornbills, kingfishers and woodpeckers Picocoraciae › Kingfishers, bee-eaters and woodpeckers Picodynastornithes
Keel-billed Toucan | Ramphastos sulfuratus
Zwavelborsttoekan | Tucán pico canoa
The Keel-billed Toucan is the large toucan of the northern part of the guide area and occurs from southern Mexico to Panama; in Mexico, Belize, Guatemala and El Salvador it is the only large toucan. It can be recognised by its large, multicoloured bill with green, orange and red. Small groups move through the canopy, flying from tree to tree with a few wingbeats and a glide. It is the national bird of Belize.
Voice
A dry, creaking, frog-like krreek-krreek-krreek, repeated at length, often by several birds at once and from a high branch. Also tapping and clattering of the bill.
Recording: Nick Talbot — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
42–55 cm, the bill about a third of that. The plumage is mostly black, with a chestnut wash on the nape and upper back. The face, throat and breast are sulphur yellow, bordered below by a narrow red band. The uppertail coverts are white, the undertail coverts red. The bare skin around the eye is yellow-green. The bill is mostly pale green, with an orange patch on the side of the upper mandible, a dark red tip and bluish tones on the lower mandible. The sexes are alike; young birds have a shorter, duller bill.
Confusion species
Yellow-throated Toucan Ramphastos ambiguus (Honduras to Panama) is larger and has a diagonally two-toned bill, yellow above and dark chestnut at the base and below, and a yelping call instead of a croak. Collared Aracari Pteroglossus torquatus is much smaller and slimmer, with a yellow belly bearing a black spot and a red-and-black band.
Habitat
Humid lowland and foothill forest, the semi-evergreen seasonal forest of Yucatán, tall secondary forest, forest edges, gallery forest and semi-open country with tall trees, also shade cacao; up to about 1200 m, locally higher. It eats mainly fruit and also takes insects, lizards, eggs and nestlings. It nests in a tree cavity, often an old woodpecker hole; groups roost together in a cavity with the tail folded over the back.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In Mexico from southern Veracruz and northern Oaxaca through Tabasco, Chiapas and the Yucatán Peninsula (Campeche, Quintana Roo and southern Yucatán); further through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras and the Caribbean side of Nicaragua to Costa Rica, where it lives on the Caribbean slope and in the north of the Pacific side, and through Panama to Darién. Outside the guide area in northern Colombia and north-western Venezuela.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Regularly seen at Tikal in Guatemala, in Belize, in the Caribbean lowlands of Costa Rica and along Pipeline Road (Camino del Oleoducto) near Gamboa in Panama. The creaking chorus is often the first sign; groups cross clearings one after another, bill first.
Conservation status
Near Threatened. It is declining through the clearance and fragmentation of lowland forest, hunting and capture for the cage-bird trade; still fairly common in large forest areas.
Scientific name
Ramphastos sulfuratus | Lesson, 1830
Lesson described the species in 1830 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. sulfuratus is Latin for 'sulphur-coloured', after the bright yellow throat and breast. The specimen the first description was based on came from Mexico.