Diet and Foraging

Lovely Cotinga probably is primarily frugivorous, but also consumes invertebrates and, occasionally, small vertebrates. At one site in southern Mexico, the cotinga exclusively visited fruiting Ficus, among the five genera of fruiting trees monitored during the study period (late May until early August; Kantak 1979). The majority of the visits to this tree were before noon, with over 40% of the visits before 07:00 (Kantak 1981). Lovely Cotingas also consume lauraceous fruit (Stiles and Skutch 1989). Little is known about the relative contributions of invertebrates to the diet, or the types of invertebrates consumed, but foraging on Hymenoptera is reported (Kirwan and Green 2011). Skutch (1969) observed a female provisioning a fledgling with a small lizard.