cotingas

A pair of swallow-tailed cotingas, for example, may build two nests, laying eggs in both.

Compared with European or North American species, the cotingas have been studied little and, consequently, almost every recent observation is of interest.

They will also travel in mixed-species feeding flocks with ovenbirds, tanagers, woodpeckers and cotingas.

Cotingas to Wagtails.

Cotingas are birds of forests or forest edges, which mostly eat fruit or insects and fruit.

Among the latter, it is known to prefer tree-living species, such as oropendolas, aracaris, tanagers and cotingas.

The toes have no webbing or joining, but in some cotingas the second and third toes are united at their basal third.

Reliable nesting records are scarce or absent, partly because most cotingas build small, inconspicuous nests, which some will even dismantle if disturbed.

The cotingas are a large family of passerine bird species found in Central America and tropical South America.

Like other cotingas, the Bearded Bellbird has a broad hooked-tipped bill, rounded wings, strong legs and a striking appearance.

Some 5,000 varieties of tropical plants and trees attract more than 100 species of birds, including flycatchers, cotingas and macaws.

He and Barbara also began detailed studies of three bird families, the Hummingbirds, the Cotingas and the Manakins, all associated with plants.

The Pompadour Cotinga (Xipholena punicea) is a species of bird in the Cotingidae family, the cotingas.

This variation is greater than in any other passerine family (unless the Kinglet Calyptura belongs with the cotingas, which would then have greater variation).

Indeed, most frugivores are variously omnivorous, though oilbirds, manikins, bell-birds and cotingas in the Neotropics may be essentially obligate, while many 'carnivores' often take fruits.

The Purple-throated Cotinga is strongly sexually dimorphic as male and female Purple-throated Cotingas have few similarities in their plumage.

In the 1880s Forbes assigned the New Zealand wrens to the subocines related to the cotingas and pittas (and gave the family the name Xenicidae).

Prey species have included Little Blue Herons, curassows, toucans, wood-quails, pigeons, macaws, parrots, cotingas, chickens and even a Black Vulture.

The specialized frugivores are, in general, foraging for only a short period of the day - in the cases of manikins and cotingas, for only some 10% of the daylight hours.

The accounts, accompanied by scrupulously clear distribution maps, provide eyewitness descriptions of the ecology and behaviour of cotingas, based chiefly on 20 years of fieldwork conducted by the author and his wife.

The fruit is an orange-red berry-like drupe 5 mm diameter, containing 5-10 seeds; it is eaten by various birds (including cotingas, pigeons, tanagers, thrushes, and trogons), which disperse the seeds in their droppings.

Penguins to parakeets, condors to hummingbirds, parrots, trogons, and toucans, rheas and flamingos, ovenbirds, honeycreepers, cotingas, oilbirds, curassows, motmots, puffbirds, manakins and potoos - even the names become increasingly diverse and unfamiliar.

For instance, the forests of the 27,181-acre Serra dos Orgaos Park in Teresopolis, a mountain resort 50 miles north of the city, is home to toucans, parrots, hummingbirds, gray-wing cotingas and kinglet kalypturas, among other species.

Although the great majority of birds are monogamous, there are plenty of species - particularly among the grouse, sandpipers, manakins, birds of paradise and cotingas - where it is common for males to have two or even more mates.