White-whiskered Puffbird

Identification

The white-whiskered puffbird is about 18 cm (7.1 in) long with an average weight of about 43 g (1.5 oz). Unlike most puffbirds, the male and female have different plumages. Both sexes have bristles around the base of the large bill, and white "whiskers", which are actually tufts of feathers. The nominate adult male's upperparts are brown to chestnut brown. The forecrown has narrow buff or tawny streaks and most of the rest of the upperparts have buff or tawny spots. The tail is chesnut brown. Its lores, supercilium, cheeks, and the sides of the neck are tawny. The throat and upper breast are tawny to tawny buff and the rest of the underparts are buffy white with darker streaks on the breast and flanks. The adult female has less of a chesnut cast; its crown is grayer and its upperparts olive to brown. Most of the underparts are buff to cinnamon-buff with darker streaks; the abdomen is white. Juveniles are like the female but with heavier streaking on the underparts. The subspecies are all similar to the nominate, differing mainly in the shades of gray, brown, and rufous and in the density of the streaking.

Taxonomy

The white-whiskered puffbird has these four subspecies:<p>It is thought to form a superspecies with the moustached puffbird (M. mystacalis) and black-streaked puffbird (M. fulvogularis).

Scientific name

Malacoptila panamensis

Authority

Lafresnaye, 1847

Order

Passeriformes

Family

Bucconidae

Genus

Malacoptila

Range and habitat

The subspecies of white-whiskered puffbird are distributed thus:<p>The species mostly inhabits dense primary evergreen forest though it is also found in secondary forest and in shorter vegetation around the edges of fields. It typically remains fairly low, within 6 m (20 ft) of the ground. In elevation it ranges from sea level to 750 m (2,500 ft) in northern Central America, to 900 m (3,000 ft) on the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica and in Colombia, and as high as 1,200 m (3,900 ft) on the Pacific slope of Costa Rica.

Migration

Resident species

Behavior

Like other puffbirds, the white-whiskered puffbird hunts by a watch-and-wait technique, sitting motionless before darting to catch large invertebrates and small vertebrates such as frogs and lizards. The prey is taken back to the perch and beaten against it prior to consumption. It has also been recorded following army ant swarms and joining mixed-species foraging flocks.<p>Almost all of the data on the white-whiskered puffbird's breeding phenology comes from Costa Rica. The breeding season there spans from mid-March into July. Nests are placed in a cavity at the end of a 46 to 56 cm (1.5 to 1.8 ft) long, 6 cm (2 in) diameter burrow in, usually, gently sloping ground. The wider nesting chamber is lined with dried leaves. The female lays two, rarely three, glossy white eggs. Both sexes incubate the eggs.<p>The white-whiskered puffbird's song is "a high-pitched descending trill ... usually with an emphasized note at the end, e.g., tssiirrrrr-tsít." It sings less often than many other puffbirds. A frequently heard call is "a high, thin, slightly reedy, drawn-out tsssiiiw or tssssiiir, fading away".

Conservation

Population trend

declining