Diet and Foraging

Crested Guans primarily are frugivorous. In Panama, they are reported to eat forest drupes such as wild figs and mangabé berries (Wetmore 1965). In Mexico, the diet includes the fruit of Bumelia peninsularis, a common tree near Santiago, Nayarit; Guatteria, a dominant tree of the rainforest of northern Chiapas; and Chiona mexicana, a small tree of the tropical evergreen forest of eastern San Luis Potosí (Leopold 1959). The dominant spring food in Tamaulipas is "xoxotl" (probably Spondias mombin) (Sutton and Pettingill 1942). They are a major consumer of the fruit of nutmeg (Virola surinamensis) in Costa Rica (Howe and Vande Kerckhove 1980) in Costa Rica. They might consume acorns, green leaves, and insects (Wagner 1953, cited by Delacour and Amadon 1973).