Howdy, friends.  Our bird this week is the versicolored barbet.  One of the larger barbets, it tops out at 41 g or 1.45 oz.  All three subspecies are the same size, around 16 cm (6.3 in), but vary slightly in weight.  This bird is native to Bolivia and Peru.  They live in submontane forests, which Wikipedia stubbornly refused to define for me, but we can safely assume that these are forests growing near but not on mountains.  The barbet prefers humid forests, especially those with lots of mosses and epiphytes.  We haven’t encountered that word in a while, but I do remember first coming across it while writing these headers.  Epiphytes are plants that live on other plants as opposed to in the ground.  The most familiar example might be an orchid, which typically lives in the crook of a tree.  They prefer old growth or secondary forest, and typically live at altitudes of 1,000 to 2,000 m (3,300 to 6,600 ft), but can be found as high as 2,225 m (7,300 ft).  Sounds like a mountain to me, but maybe its more of a mountainside or highland near mountains.  

Like other barbets we have covered, it eats a mix of fruit, seeds and arthropods.  Its diet skews heavily toward the former two, which make up about 80% of what it eats.  It forages in the canopy and mid-story, alone or in pairs.  It does sometimes join mixed species flocks while doing so.  It hunts arthropods by poking around in and disrupting piles of leaves.  This might be why it likes living around epiphytes, since I could see those trapping dead leaves up in trees and providing shelter for bugs.  This way the barbet gets to eat a meal which would otherwise be found on the forest floor without risking leaving the safety of the trees.  But that is just a guess on my part.

Although there has been little research on the breeding and nesting habits of these birds, a single nest has been found and studied.  It was in a hole in a tree, similar to the nesting habits of other barbets we have recently discussed.  There appears to be some disagreement about whether the three existing subspecies are rated as “near threatened” or “of least concern” by the IUCN, at least according to my research.  I found one source saying one of the subspecies had recently been upgraded to “of least concern,” but the timeline didn’t add up.  At least according to our good friends at Birdlife Datazone, the blue-mustached subspecies is considered of least concern.  So that’s good.  

youHave a good weekend, everybody.  If you’re protesting, be safe out there.  I guess be safe out there either way, but especially if you plan to exercise your first amendment rights.

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