#puffbird

[herpsandbirds]

Collared Puffbird (Bucco capensis), family Bucconidae, order Piciformes, found in northern South America

photograph by long.jacki

[birdstudies]

November 18, 2024 - Moustached Puffbird (Malacoptila mystacalis) These puffbirds are found in and around forests and open woodlands in a scattered range in the Andes in Colombia and Venezuela. Their diet has not been studied, but closely related species feed on invertebrates. Probably breeding between February and September, depending on the area of their range, they nest in holes in earth banks.

[unrestrained-balderdash-art-blog]

Day 14 of Pied Month - Pied Puffbird! Originally planned to do bi since it's in the name, but it looks so round so I had to give it the circle of the intersex flag

Reference photo by Francesco Veronesi

I'm on Cara, it's a social media for art that's anti-AI, follow me @ tbalderdash

[na-bird-of-the-day]

BOTD: Pied Puffbird

Photo: Carlos Sanchez

"Puffbirds are oddly-proportioned birds with rotund bodies and huge heads. Pied is small, black-and-white, with an obvious black breast band and a thin white eyebrow. Perches conspicuously, often on a bare branch in the canopy or even on a telephone wire. Usually at the edge of the forest, overlooking an open area."

- eBird

[birdirectory]

white-eared puffbird (Nystalus chacuru) by Paulo Dias

[a-book-of-creatures]

I'm glad you asked!

Puffbirds are in the family Bucconidae, which is most closely related to the jacamars and more distantly to toucans and woodpeckers.

They evolved as sit-and-wait hunters, which means they typically... you're not going to believe it... sit and wait for something tasty, an insect or perhaps a lizard, to pass by them. So their adaptations involve being as unassuming and drab as possible. That's why they're called puffbirds, because they sit to sit and floof themselves up on a branch.

And they get no respect for it.

See, being a camouflaged sit-and-wait hunter means you have to be supremely confident that sitting still will be good enough to not be seen.

Which means that your defense in the face of danger is typically to freeze.

Which means that humans have been calling them idiots for centuries, "the most stupid birds imaginable".

One species is known in Venezuela as aguantapiedra, "stone-endurer", because of its tendency to stay put despite having rocks thrown at it. The same goes for cabeza piedra. In Brazil there is João Doido, "dozy John". In German they are known as faulvogel, which refers to laziness or possibly to foulness.

Swainson asserts that "there is something very grotesque in the appearance of all the Puff-birds". In 1873 E. L. Layard said he was "struck with their extreme stupidity" since he was able to shoot three of them off a branch with none of the others flinching as they were shot.

Fortunately, despite all this lack of respect, puffbirds do not taste good, are smelly, are not colorful, are very inactive, require large insects for food, and are poor singers. Which means that they have attracted very little interest to humans other than the fact that you can throw rocks at them and they won't fly away. They're not being hunted for food or fishing flies or poached as pets. They're doing pretty well all things considered.

References

del Hoyo, J.; Elliott, A.; and Sargatal, J. (eds.) (2002) Handbook of the Birds of the World vol. 7. Lynx Edicions, Barcelona.

I need to talk about puffbirds :(

[dougdimmadodo]

Rufous-Tailed Jacamar (Galbula ruficauda)

Family: Jacamar Family (Galbulidae)

IUCN Conservation Status: Least Concern

Though somewhere between hummingbirds and kingfishers in appearance, jacamars like the Rufous-Tailed Jacamar are believed to be cousins of woodpeckers and have historically been placed alongside them in the order Piciformes, although more recent genetic evidence suggests that alongside their close relatives the puffbirds they may actually be distinct enough to warrant being reclassified as part of entirely new order, the Galbuliformes. Found mainly in forests and well-vegetated shrublands across northern South America and southern Central America, Rufous-Tailed Jacamars, like most members of their family, are agile insect-eaters that use their extremely long, narrow bills to catch small insects such as butterflies and wasps straight out of the air.

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Image Source: Here

[snailkites]

I'm scrubbing through the Merlin recordings I took in Costa Rica looking for calls we couldn't ID in the field or any good audio to clip for the Macaulay Library. It's been really funny reliving the outings and hearing us in the background of the recordings like:

"hiii puffbird omg hiiiii"

"omg poison dart frogs!!!" "Let's go catch them! We could kill ourselves!"

"I'm looking at some whackass flycatcher with Zero distinguishing features"

...In between the eardrum-shattering phone handling pocket noise.

[herpsandbirds]

Crescent-chested Puffbird (Malacoptila striata), family Bucconidae, order Piciformes, Tremembé, Brasil

photograph by Osmar Santos Lima Filho

[birdstudies]

January 19, 2024 - Pied Puffbird (Notharchus tectus) These puffbirds are found in and around forests and woodlands, often near water, from Nicaragua south to parts of central Brazil and Bolivia. They feed on insects, including dragonflies, grasshoppers, moths, bees, and wasps, foraging in short flights, often high in the canopy. They nest in holes dug into arboreal termite nests, laying clutches of two eggs. Both parents care for the chicks.

[avatar-of-pride]

Saw some birds at the zoo,

A laughing owl, bald eagle, scarlet ibis, puffbird, mute swan, malagsy sacred ibis, and African spoonbill

[elvis2130]

Puffbird

[otussketching]

Fossil Novembirb: Day 13

The phosphorate beds of Quercy, France preserve a wealth of fossils from the late Eocene and Oligocene epoch, about 35-25 million years ago. At that time, the early Paleogene jungle hothouse had ended. The climate was drying and cooling, and in parts of the world forests were giving way to savannah and scrubland, as was in Quercy. But that didn't stop birds. They started to take advantage of these new wide open spaces.

Aegialornis: An enigmatic bird that was closely related to swifts. Unlike swifts, it could perch and hold on to branches, but it was also an incredible flyer.

Quercypsitta: A unique group of not well known stem-parrots which likely resembled the earlier Halcyornithids, corvid-like stem-parrots from Europe and North America.

Palaeoglaux: Also known from the Messel Pit, this early relatively small owl may have been a diurnal hunter of small prey and had peculiar body feathers.

Sylphornis: A mysterious member of the piciformes with unique morphology, resembling jacamars and puffbirds.

Paraortyx: One of the earliest true phasianid galliforms, related to partridges, pheasants and chickens. It likely had a similar lifestyle to them, only taking flight when necessary.

Pelargopappus: An early relative of the long-legged secretarybird, this Eocene relative stalked the plains in a similar manner, stomping down on any prey it could catch.

Strigogyps: An omnivorous turkey-sized member of the cariamiform family, it is also known from the middle Eocene of Germany.

Archaeoganga: A relatively large and one of the earliest members of that wonderful desert bird clade, the sandgrouse.

[dionysus-complex]

anyways. collared puffbird

[justsomehibird]

bird every name. Didn't think so sweatie

Caatinga antwren

Caatinga cacholote

Caatinga parakeet

Caatinga puffbird

Cabanis's bunting

Cabanis's greenbul

Cabanis's ground sparrow

Cabanis's seedeater

Cabanis's spinetail

Cabanis's wren

Cabot's tern

Cabot's tragopan

Cachar bulbul

Cachar wedge-billed babbler

Cackling goose

Cactus canastero

Cactus wren

Caica parrot

Calandra lark

Calayan rail

California condor

California gnatcatcher

California gull

California quail

California scrub jay

California thrasher

California towhee

Calliope hummingbird

Cambodian laughingthrush

Cambodian tailorbird

Cameroon greenbul

Cameroon indigobird

Cameroon olive greenbul

Cameroon olive pigeon

Cameroon sunbird

Camiguin hanging parrot

Camiguin hawk-owl

Campbell albatross

Campbell shag

Campbell teal

Campbell's fairywren

Campina thrush

Campo flicker

Campo miner

Campo troupial

Canada goose

Canada jay

Canada warbler

Canary flyrobin

Canary Islands chiffchaff

Canary Islands oystercatcher

Canary Islands stonechat

Canary white-eye

Canebrake groundcreeper

Canebrake wren

Canivet's emerald

Canvasback

Canyon canastero

Canyon towhee

Canyon wren

Cape Barren goose

Cape batis

Cape bulbul

Cape bunting

Cape canary

Cape clapper lark

Cape cormorant

Cape crow

Cape eagle-owl

Cape gannet

Cape grassbird

Cape long-billed lark

Cape longclaw

Cape May warbler

Cape parrot

Cape penduline tit

Cape petrel

Cape robin-chat

Cape rock thrush

Cape rockjumper

Cape shoveler

Cape siskin

Cape sparrow

Cape spurfowl

Cape starling

Cape sugarbird

Cape teal

Cape Verde buzzard

Cape Verde shearwater

Cape Verde storm petrel

Cape Verde swift

Cape Verde warbler

Cape vulture

Cape wagtail

Cape weaver

[birdirectory]

white-eared puffbird (Nystalus chacuru) by Alan Souza