The Story
I photographed this Moustached Puffbird (Malacoptila mystacalis) near Filandia, Quindío, Colombia on June 19, 2017. It is a puffbird of Colombia, Ecuador and Venezuela, 20 to 23 centimeters long. Both sexes have bristles around the base of the large bill and white tufts of feathers that look like whiskers. The canyon of the Barbas River, on the edge of Filandia, holds about 790 hectares of very humid premontane forest between 1,500 and 2,100 meters. The Barbas canyon forest is part of the Barbas-Bremen protected area on the border of Quindío and Risaralda.
I took this with a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM, at 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600. IUCN lists the Moustached Puffbird as Least Concern with a decreasing population, and the Barbas-Bremen soil conservation district protects about 4,910 hectares of Filandia and Circasia, including the Barbas canyon.
©2018 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Moustached Puffbird (Malacoptila mystacalis) belongs to the family Bucconidae (Puffbirds) 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