Touky's family

Might be Touky's mom?

Collared Aracaris of the Toucan family are very family oriented birds. Wikipedia says this: "They are fed by both parents, assisted by up to three other adults, probably from a previous brood, and fledge after about 6 weeks, with feeding by the adults continuing for several weeks after leaving the nest. The Aracaris are unusual for toucans in that they roost socially throughout the year, up to six adults and fledged young sleeping in the same hole with tails folded over their backs."

Please read the previous article (The rest of the Touky story) for the background, but while we were caring for an injured baby Aracari, his family returned just about daily for weeks to check on him.

Sometimes only one or two would come but often three or four would visit. They seemed frantic to get their "Touky" back and squawked like you wouldn't believe. Toucans are definitely not song birds, that's for sure!

Occasionally, they would miss a day, but not often and it may have just been that they were here but more quiet than usual and I didn't notice them. It was really heart warming to see.


One would get on the power line and jump back and forth squawking.


Another one would quietly perch high up in this tree (photo below) almost every night — maybe the mother pining for her baby. Can you see her silhouette on the lowest branch pointing to the right?




If you are interested in birds, A Guide to the Birds of Mexico and Northern Central America is a great book. It doesn't cover all of Honduras but does include the Bay Islands and includes an appendix on 50 additional known species in the Olancho region. It's not cheap but this book is 850 pages with wonderful illustrations.

And below are some more family photos — I'm having a terrible time arranging them in Blogger's new interface and I've also found out that I can't resize them so I'll just plop them below. I am not liking Blogger's changes! These aren't great photos because the birds would often visit right as the sun was going down and I always forget to adjust the camera settings.