The Story
On June 22, 2017, I photographed this female Red-headed Barbet (Eubucco bourcierii) in Manizales, Caldas, Colombia. It eats caterpillars and other insects as well as fruit such as berries, and at feeders it takes bananas. Females have a green back and a grayish-yellow throat with a yellow to orange band below it. Caldas has 837 bird species on record, about 45 percent of the birds of Colombia. Manizales sits on the steep ridges of Colombia’s Central Cordillera, near the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, which rises to 5,321 meters.
I used a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM for this one, at 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600. IUCN lists the Red-headed Barbet as Least Concern with a decreasing population, and Manizales keeps forest fragments inside the city, such as the Ecoparque Los Alcázares Arenillo, declared an area of environmental interest in 1995.
©2018 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Red-headed Barbet (Eubucco bourcierii) 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 2020), with the population trend listed as decreasing. Source: IUCN Red List