2017—What’s In A Name?

The Chestnut-mandibled Toucan is now called the Black-mandibled Toucan.  While its body feathers are black, the rest of this bird is anything but black, with a  bi-colored beak of chestnut and gold; a yellow throat; a green eye ring; a few red tail feathers; and blue feet.  I’m hard pressed to figure out how the bird was renamed the Black-mandibled Toucan.  The thing is, the bill really is chestnut-colored not black.  And the throat really is yellow, so I could go with its alternate name of Yellow-throated Toucan or  maybe it could be the Blue-footed Toucan, or even the Green-eyed Toucan but the Black-mandibled Toucan?  I think not.

Whatever its called, though, the toucan with the suspect name  is really very adept at using its huge, unwieldy-looking chestnut-colored beak to feed itself.  In this series of shots, the toucan first plucks a fruit from the Cecropia Tree, flips the fruit down its craw, and swallows.