The other day while sitting outside on the terrace doing some work on his laptop, Eddie got a visit from a Chestnut-mandibled Toucan.  He landed in a tree next to the terrace not more than 25 or 30 feet away.  Seeing toucans around the property is a common thing, so we didn’t pay much attention to him at first.  A few minutes later, we glanced his way and noticed that he was still sitting on the branch and posing beautifully.  Eddie mentioned to me that the light was really nice (as it was later afternoon and some heavy rain clouds were starting to fill the sky).   It was an opportunity that Eddie couldn’t resist; he decided that work could wait.  He quickly grabbed his camera and started clicking away.  The toucan was being very cooperative, so Eddie figured he had the time to retrieve his tripod to take even better photos.  The toucan stayed in the tree posing for Eddie for about an hour!  We think he would have stayed much longer, but the storm rolled in and a huge clap of thunder scared him away.  Our resident toucan (who appeared after Erik was here, of course) visits us several times a day…usually early in the morning, mid-afternoon and sometimes in the early evening just before sunset.  We usually hear his call first before we see him, but sometimes, we see him flying onto his regular tree.  You may wonder how we know that this is the same bird.  Eddie noticed while looking at his photos that the toucan had an injury on the left side of his beak.  Since toucans pan their heads back and forth when stationery, it’s easy to see both sides of the beak when watching them for even a minute or two.  Side note:  We really don’t know if our toucan is a male or female since both look the same.

Note the injury to his beak which he probably got in a fight with another bird

A Chestnut-mandibled Toucan’s call is very loud and distinctive. Yesterday, Eddie managed to catch our toucan calling on video.  Here is the clip.