The Story
I photographed this female Gilded Barbet (Capito auratus) at the Hotel Campestre Resguardos de Paz, near El Paujil, Caquetá, Colombia, in February 2020. It lives in the Orinoco basin and the western Amazon, mostly in the lowlands but up into the lower foothills of the eastern Andes. It was once treated as a subspecies of the Black-spotted Barbet. Females have more orange-yellow edging on the wings than males, with yellowish streaks on the face and back. It is a close relative of the toucans and eats mostly fruit.
I used a Pentax K-1 with the HD Pentax-D FA 150-450mm f/4.5-5.6 for this one, at 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 400. Most of El Paujil’s people are settlers, or the children of settlers, who came mainly from Huila and Tolima.
©2020 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Gilded Barbet (Capito auratus) belongs to the family Capitonidae (New World Barbets) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2024), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List