Howdy, friends.  We’re doing barbets again this week, although information is getting more scarce as I move down the list.  Our bird this week is the lemon-throated barbet, native to Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador and a bit of Peru.  The Clements Checklist of Birds of the World, accepted by the American Birding Association and our friends at eBird, divides the lemon-throated barbet into four subspecies, grouping two as lemon-throated and two as flame-throated.  Much of the information I was able to find refers to the flame-throated barbet, but is assumed to be accurate for the lemon-throated variety as well.

The lemon-throated barbet is approximately 15.5 cm (6.1 in) long and weighs 24.5 to 34 g (0.86 to 1.20 oz).  The flame-throated variety is slightly heavier, tipping the scales at up to an ounce and a half. These birds are sexually dimorphic, with the female showing more muted colors with a really neat looking blue-gray color on its head. Lemon-throated barbets prefer the edges and clearings of terra firme and varzea forests, which we learned about last week.  They seem to prefer second-growth forests, and are more numerous there than in mature forest although I wasn’t able to find out why.  

The altitude at which they live varies throughout their range, and is anywhere from sea level up to 1,375 m (4,511 ft) in the mountainous forests of Colombia. The lemon-throated barbet’s diet consists of fruits and arthropods in roughly equal measure.  They forage solo or in pairs in the forest canopy, usually between 12 and 24 m (39 and 79 ft) off the ground.  They are frequently seen to join foraging flocks made up of several species, and spend about a third of their hunting time looking for arthropods in clusters of dead leaves. 

Breeding and nest-building have not yet been observed, but breeding season is thought to run from April to November. The lemon-throated barbet does not migrate. It is considered as “of least concern” by the IUCN. Like our subject last week, its population is thought to be dropping, but not enough to merit reconsideration. It also benefits from occupying a very, very large range, 1.3 million square kilometers.

Take care of yourselves, folks. Be kind to yourselves and others.

Links: https://tinyurl.com/95j7hypz, https://tinyurl.com/k9n6xtbh, https://ebird.org/species/letbar1, https://tinyurl.com/58xmbsbn, https://tinyurl.com/5bj2cj79, https://tinyurl.com/ead4e8yc, https://tinyurl.com/mt59cf7f