The Story
On June 22, 2017, I photographed this Southern Emerald-Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus albivitta) in Manizales, Caldas, Colombia. It eats many kinds of fruit as well as invertebrates and small vertebrates. It is a green toucan, 33 to 38 centimeters long, with a black bill striped yellow along the top. Manizales sits on the steep ridges of Colombia’s Central Cordillera, near the Nevado del Ruiz volcano, which rises to 5,321 meters. Caldas has 837 bird species on record, about 45 percent of the birds of Colombia.
I used a Canon EOS 70D and the EF400mm f/5.6L USM for this one, at 1/250 sec, f/11, ISO 400. IUCN lists the Southern Emerald-Toucanet as Least Concern with a decreasing population, and the city of Manizales owns and protects forest fragments such as the Ecoparque Los Yarumos inside its urban area.
©2018 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Southern Emerald-Toucanet (Aulacorhynchus albivitta) belongs to the family Ramphastidae (Toucans) 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