Birds
Capuchinbird
Perissocephalus tricolor · also called capuchinbird, calfbird
The capuchinbird is a big, cinnamon-coloured rainforest bird with a bald blue head that early naturalists thought looked like a monk in a hood. Its other name, the calfbird, comes from its voice: at communal display grounds high in the canopy, males give a long, low, mooing growl that visitors regularly mistake for a distant cow or a chainsaw.
Overview
The capuchinbird lives only in the forests of the Guiana Shield in north-eastern South America, in the interior of tall humid rainforest. It is about 34–37 cm long, warm orange-brown with blackish wings, a fluffy feather collar, and a naked bluish-grey head. It is a cotinga, in the same family as the cock-of-the-rock and the bellbirds, and mostly eats fruit, dispersing seeds.
The head and the call
The bare face and crown, ringed by the short feather collar, recalled the cowl of a Capuchin friar. The male’s advertisement call is a long, resonant growl like a lowing cow, which carries far through the forest.
Lek display
Males gather at traditional treetop leks. Each holds a small perch, calls for hours, and during the call crouches, fluffs up, pulls its head into its collar, and erects orange tufts near the tail. Females visit, choose a male, and then nest and raise the single chick alone.
Status
The capuchinbird is Least Concern, widespread and generally common, though dependent on extensive intact forest for both fruit and lek sites.
Capuchinbird: common questions
Why is it called a capuchinbird?
The name refers to the bird's head. The skin of the face and crown is bare and bluish-grey, and it is framed by a ruff of very short, dense feathers around the neck. To early naturalists this arrangement, a small head emerging from a hood-like collar, recalled the cowl worn by monks of the Capuchin order, so the bird was named after them. The same idea is behind the scientific name, in which the genus Perissocephalus means unusual-headed. The bird is also called the calfbird, after its call, so it has one name for how it looks and one for how it sounds.
What does the capuchinbird's call sound like?
It is one of the strangest sounds in the Amazon. The male produces a long, deep, buzzing growl that rises and falls, most often likened to the mooing of a distant cow, but also to a chainsaw, a revving engine, a foghorn, or an electric drone. It is surprisingly loud and low for a bird of this size and carries far through dense forest. A lek of several males calling in turn, from perches scattered through the canopy, produces an eerie, machine-like chorus that many first-time visitors mistake for something mechanical.
What is a lek and how does the capuchinbird use one?
A lek is a traditional site where males of a species gather to display communally, and where females come only to choose a mate and then leave to nest alone. Capuchinbird leks are located high in the crowns of tall forest trees, and the same sites are used year after year. Each male holds a small perch a few metres from his neighbours, and he spends hours calling and performing a visual display in which he hunches over, puffs out his plumage, pulls his bald head down into his collar, and fans out orange feather tufts near his tail. Females move through the lek, watch and listen, and select the male they find most impressive.
Is the capuchinbird related to the cock-of-the-rock and the umbrellabird?
Yes. All three belong to the cotinga family, a group of fruit-eating birds of Central and South American forests that is famous for extreme ornaments and displays. The Andean cock-of-the-rock, the umbrellabirds, the bellbirds, and the capuchinbird are all cotingas, and lekking, in which males gather to display and females choose, has evolved several times within the family. The capuchinbird's particular combination of a bald head, a hood-like collar, orange rump tufts, and a mooing call is its own contribution to the family's catalogue of oddities.