Family Capitonidae
Red-headed Barbet
Eubucco bourcierii
In Spanish: Barbudo Cabecirrojo (Ruano)
- Resident
The morning feeders at Rancho Naturalista, in the foothills above Turrialba. All year.
Krrrrrrr. The call is a resonant trill that sounds more like a toad than a bird, and it is oddly hard to place in the trees. When the male does show, the red head looks painted on, cut off cleanly from the olive back by a white collar.
The Caribbean Foothills above Turrialba are where our clients most often get it, at the Rancho Naturalista feeders in the morning. It eats fruit, and at a feeder that means bananas, so it comes in close with the Collared Aracari and the Gray-headed Chachalaca while the hummingbirds work the flowers by the dozen.
Where to see it
- Hotspot page
- Named place
- Nearby lodge (numbers match the cards)
- Rancho Naturalista's reserve, above Turrialbaat the morning feeders, the male with a head that looks painted on.
Nearby lodges
Within 20 km of a place on the map, in the same zone.
- 1
Rancho Naturalista0.2 km from Rancho Naturalista's reserve, above TurrialbaSee the lodge - 2
Hotel Casa Turire9.6 km from Rancho Naturalista's reserve, above TurrialbaSee the lodge
How to recognise it
Our sources give no length for it, only a weight: the males weigh 30 to 41 g. The male is the easy one. He has a red head, an orange to yellow breast, a white belly, and a white collar between the head and the olive-green back, and that red head settles it. The female is far plainer. Her crown, the top of the head, runs from dull orange to green depending on the subspecies, the local form of the bird, with a greyish-yellow throat and a yellow to orange band below it.
Where it lives
The interior and edges of evergreen mountain forest, and secondary forest next to it. Across its whole range it is found between about 400 and 2,400 m, though that varies a lot from region to region. The Costa Rican birds belong to a subspecies shared only with western Panama.
When to see it
All year.
Trips that find it
- Birding in Costa Rica's Eco-Zones11 nightsSee the trip
- Best of Birding in Costa Rica's Caribbean9 nightsSee the trip
- Caribbean Lowlands Birding Tour11 nightsSee the trip
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Plan my birding tripHow we know this 1 sources, each read on the date shown
- Wikipedia: Red-headed barbet read 4 November 2026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red-headed_barbet