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Yellow-billed Cotinga - BirdForum Opus

Male
Photo © by Robert L Jarvis
Rio Tarcoles, Costa Rica, March 2011
Carpodectes antoniae

Identification

19·5–21 cm (7¾-8¼ in)
Male

  • Grey upperparts
  • Bluish-grey crown
  • Bright yellow bill with black line along culmen

Female

  • Ashy-grey, darker on forehead and crown
  • Blackish wings and tail, with wing-coverts and secondaries broadly edged white
  • Pale grey throat, breast and belly becoming paler in vent
  • White eye-ring
  • Black bill with yellow base
Female
Photo © by Birdingcraft
Cerro Lodge, Costa Rica, February 2010

Similar species

Male Snowy Cotinga differs in having blue-grey bill, Black-tipped Cotinga has black bill; both should not overlap in range.

Distribution

Pacific lowlands of southern Costa Rica and western Panama. Most of the Costa Rican population is found in the Osa Peninsula

Taxonomy

This is a monotypic species1.

Habitat

Photo © by Luis R
Río Rincón Road, El Golfito. Peninsula de Osa, Costa Rica, 7 March 2020

Moist lowland forests, mangroves and moist shrubland. They especially prefer habitat where mangrove and lowland rainforest is contiguous, without intervening pastures.

Behaviour

Diet

Their diet consists almost entirely of fruit, including mistletoe.

Breeding

Apparently no nests have been seen, but feathered young have been observed being fed in the fork of a tree at about 10 m height.

Their nesting behaviour is likely to be similar to Snowy Cotinga, who construct a shallow platform from tendrils and lichen placed in the fork of a tree

References

  1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, S. M. Billerman, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2019. The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World: v2019. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
  2. BirdLife International
  3. Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive (retrieved December 2014)
  4. Lebbin, D. J., C. Pott, K. Leavelle, E. Jones, A. Gallo, and L. Powell (2020). Yellow-billed Cotinga (Carpodectes antoniae), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.yebcot1.01

Recommended Citation

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