Bird in the Spotlight: Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan

28 December, 2024

By Alexander Trifunovic

Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan (Andigena laminirostris) in Ecuador. Photo by Christoph Moning, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Plate-billed Mountain-Toucans (Andigena laminirostris) occupy a restricted range in the Ecuadorian and Colombian Andes. They are residents of humid montane forests shrouded in mist, and they are partial to areas heavily draped in epiphytes, bromeliads, and mosses. This species is easily separated from other species of mountain-toucans by its unique, yellow-plated maxilla. Both sexes are similar in plumage and bill coloration with females averaging smaller body size and a shorter bill. Pairs fluff their brightly-colored flank patches and undertail coverts and bounce around during courtship, and the male bows and bobs his head, sings, and will courtship-feed the female. Pairs often commandeer a nest cavity from a Toucan Barbet where they continue excavation and construct their nest.

Plate-billed Mountain-Toucan looking out of a nest hole. Photo by Christoph Moning, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Plate-billed Mountain-Toucans are almost entirely frugivorous, feeding on the fruits of Cecropia, palms, myrtaceous trees like guavas, Ocotea, Beilschmiedia, and figs. Small fruits are swallowed whole and large fruits are held in the foot and sheared with the serrated bill. Young are fed an assortment of prey as well, including insects, eggs, snails, small birds, and rodents. In Colombia, Plate-billed Mountain-Toucans were recorded eating fruits from 49 species of plants in 22 families, making them critically important for dispersing seeds and maintaining the plant diversity of their montane forest homes. As with other range-restricted species, habitat destruction is a particularly pressing threat. They are resilient to limited disturbance, and will persist in selectively logged forest, but aggressive forest clearing for agriculture, logging, and mining is unfortunately prevalent at the altitudes where Plate-billed Mountain-Toucans occur. They are can be seen in private ecotourism reserves and research stations in Ecuador, but these birds are already classified as Near-Threatened and declining, indicating a need for conservation action while they are still fairly common.

Cecropia telealba tree in Colombia. Photo by Alejandro Bayer Tamayo, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.