Order
Piciformes
Family
Ramphastidae
Genus
Aulacorhynchus
 
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Version 1.0

This is a historic version of this account.  Current version

 - Southern Emerald-Toucanet
 - Southern Emerald-Toucanet (Santa Marta)
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Southern Emerald-Toucanet Aulacorhynchus albivitta

Thomas S. Schulenberg, A. M. Contreras-González, Claudia I. Rodríguez-Flores, Carlos A. Soberanes-González, Marîa del Coro Arizmendi, and Kolten Powell
Version: 1.0 — Published September 15, 2017

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Introduction

Southern Emerald-Toucanet, a small toucan of the Andes, is the South American counterpart to Northern Emerald-Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus prasinus) of Central America. Like other species of Aulacorhynchus, it is primarily bright green, with a white or blue throat, and rufous undertail coverts and rufous tips to the rectrices. This species is quite variable geographically, containing subspecies. The subspecies differ subtly in size, and more dramatically in the color of the throat (white, pale gray, blue, or black) and the pattern of the bill. The bill is black and yellow in all populations, but the extent of the yellow may cover most of the culmen (most subspecies) or be restricted to the tip of the bill in some populations. Southern Emerald-Toucanet typically forages on fruit and small vertebrates in humid forest, frequently moving together in small flocks. The biology of this species presumably is very similar to that of Northern Emerald-Toucanet, but, in contrast to the Central American species, Southern Emerald-Toucanet is much less well-known.

Distribution of the Southern Emerald-Toucanet - Range Map
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  • Year-round
  • Migration
  • Breeding
  • Non-Breeding
Distribution of the Southern Emerald-Toucanet

Recommended Citation

Schulenberg, T. S., A. M. Contreras-González, C. I. Rodríguez-Flores, C. A. Soberanes-González, M. d. C. Arizmendi, and K. Powell (2017). Southern Emerald-Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus albivitta), version 1.0. In Neotropical Birds Online (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/nb.souemt1.01