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Bearded Bellbird - BirdForum Opus

Photo © by Gallus
Asa Wright, Trinidad, March 2005
Procnias averano

Identification

27-28cm
Male

  • White to greyish-white body
  • Black wings
  • Brown head
  • Un-feathered, black mossy wattles like a beard
  • Dark eyes
  • Broad, black, hooked tipped bill
  • Grey-black legs

Female

  • Olive green upperparts
  • Dusky head
  • Yellow underparts streaked green
  • Yellow vent

Distribution

Northern South America: found in Trinidad, Colombia, Venezuela, Guyana, Brazil

Taxonomy

Subspecies

There are 2 subspecies[1]:

Habitat

Low-midlevel rain forest

Behaviour

Diet

The diet includes a wide variety of fruits and berries.

Breeding

The female lays and incubates the single brown-mottled, light tan egg into a flimsy nest of twigs which is placed in a tree.

Vocalisation

Males hold territory which they advertise with one of the loudest of any birdcalls. There are essentially two calls -the loudest is a sudden explosive 'BOK'.

The second call is a series of almost musical bell-like notes which sound like a demonic blacksmith knocking the hell out of his anvil. Hence it's common name of "Anvil Bird"


Recording copyright NJLarsen at Asa Wright in Trinidad.

References

  1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, D. Roberson, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2014. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: Version 6.9., with updates to August 2014. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
  2. Avibase
  3. Wikipedia
  4. Answers.com
  5. BF Member observations
  6. Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive (retrieved February 2015)

Recommended Citation

External Links

GSearch checked for 2020 platform.

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