Eye to Eye with a (Piggish) Toucan

Most people who know next to nothing about tropical birds have absolutely no trouble identifying a Toucan. If nothing else, you can look no further than your favorite childhood breakfast cereal. Toucans are kind of amazing animals. It seems like it should be impossible for them to fly with their giant, boat-like beaks, but nonetheless they defy all logic by doing so. They are, however, only really able to fly in short bursts, usually from a higher level to a lower one, so you won’t see them up in the air making all kinds of racket with that other well-known tropical bird, the parrot.

But that doesn’t mean they can’t hop nimbly from limb to limb of some really high trees, and that they don’t make a racket.

The first time I was in the Yellow-throated Toucan and the Fiery-billed Aracari enclosure, I discovered the first interesting factoid about toucans: you have to carry the trash bucket of cleaned-up old food with you at all times. Otherwise, the toucan will attempt to steal food right out of it, often knocking it over in the process. When I first started volunteering there, I was so focused on what I was doing and making sure I picked up every single tiny little spare piece of food that I forgot to focus on what the animals themselves were doing. (Okay, I actually still do that. Cut me some slack–I’ve only been doing this once a week for two months.) I paid attention to the important things, like not letting them out of the enclosure, but there were multiple times when I stood up suddenly from bending over to pick up a piece of food and found myself, well, eye-to-eye with a toucan. I love toucans, so this is not a bad thing at all. But there’s something about standing up to see that giant chestnut- and yellow-colored beak inches from your head that gives you pause for a second, even if you have no actual fear of them.

A few weeks after that first encounter, I was cleaning out the toucan enclosure again, and had just recently had a tiny scare from one of the Collared Peccaries, wild pigs who can be slightly aggressive. I had made the mistake earlier of peeking over the wall where they’re enclosed and had one lunge at me when I wasn’t expecting it, so I was already kind of primed to be nervous about them. I was by now quite used to being close to the toucans, but up to then had only heard their normal whistley-chattery call. I was once again bent over, concentrating on picking up the food pieces they didn’t want, when I suddenly heard the grunting sound of a pig.

And it was in the toucan enclosure.

Okay, the pig wasn’t exactly, but the sound definitely was. I looked around trepidatiously, but the only thing on the ground was…you guessed it…the very piggy toucan. And that was the first day I learned my second interesting toucan factoid: toucans can make a noise that sounds for all the world like a pig. Apparently it’s their alarm call, but you won’t find that sound anywhere on eBird, because I looked. (I would have thought I had just imagined it if Sean and I hadn’t heard some of the toucans at our house making the exact same sound today. I felt a little vindicated being able to share that experience with Sean.)

Speaking of wily and “piggy” animals who aren’t actually pigs, there are two non-resident (resident) monkeys who hang around the property at Alturas. One is a White-faced Capuchin monkey and the other is a Squirrel monkey. The Squirrel monkey specifically has no discernible concern about us measly humans, and has no qualms about stealing food out of the food trash buckets, which is the other reason that you really need to keep them on your person at all times. You don’t want the monkey getting sick because he steals food that used to belong to another animal, so we have to do things like hide the food in the peccary enclosure so that the Squirrel monkey doesn’t find it. (It never works. He always does.) It is a funny feeling having to shoo him away from the door when you let yourself in to the peccary enclosure though. He’s a cunning nuisance, but he’s also an adorable one, and you have to kind of act like you don’t notice the adorable part.

The other non-resident (resident) monkey, the Capuchin, has not been as omnipresent as the Squirrel monkey, at least not when I’ve been there. My one close encounter with him was a week or two ago when I was feeding the Capuchin residents. I made the mistake of putting the food a little too close to the bars of the enclosure and went to place more food around the enclosure. When I turned around, there was the Capuchin with his body pressed against the enclosure and his long arm reaching as far as it would reach, trying to get some tasty egg and fruit that was not intended for him. When I realized what was happening, I shooed him away and moved the food closer in to the enclosure so he couldn’t reach it.

Today I had another chance to clean the toucan/aracari enclosure, and this time the toucan followed me around, pecking at my muck boots with his ginormous snoot, while the aracari actually got within an arms’ length of me for the first time. Piggy toucans are my favorite kind, as you’ll see in a future post about our new fruit feeders at home. Stay tuned…