Family Ramphastidae
Yellow-throated Toucan
Ramphastos ambiguus
In Spanish: Tucán Pico Castaño (Quioro, Dios te dé, Gran Curré Negro)
- Resident
Lowland evergreen forest, up to about 1,200 m. All year.
Dios te dé, te dé. That is how the call is written down, a loud yelp that carries a long way, and Dios te dé is one of the bird's Spanish names.
It is bigger and darker than the Keel-billed Toucan, and often on the same branch. It does not hold a territory, but a single bird will often defend one fruiting tree against the rest. Listen as it flies over: notches in the two outer flight feathers make its wings rustle.
Where to see it
- Hotspot page
- Named place
- Nearby lodge (numbers match the cards)
- Manuel Antonio National Parknot in the park itself but on the guided four-hour walk through the farms and rainforest of Naranjito, inland from the beach, where our notes name it with the White-throated Shrike-Tanager and the Short-tailed Hawk.
Nearby lodges
No lodge of ours sits within 20 km of these places yet.
How to recognise it
About 47 to 61 cm with the bill, up to two school rulers end to end, and the biggest toucan on our pages. Females have shorter bills than males. The face, throat and upper breast are bright yellow, with a white band and then a crimson one below, and the vent and the feathers under the tail are bright red. The bill settles it against the Keel-billed. On the Costa Rican birds the lower half, the mandible, is maroon to a reddish chestnut brown, with none of the Keel-billed's green and orange. Its Spanish name, Tucán Pico Castaño, means the chestnut-billed toucan.
Where it lives
Mainly lowland evergreen primary forest, and in Costa Rica up to about 1,200 m.
When to see it
All year. It nests from March to June in Costa Rica.
Trips that find it
- Birding in Costa Rica's Top Three Destinations9 nights · the Naranjito morning is day 7.See the trip
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Plan my birding tripHow we know this 1 sources, each read on the date shown
- Wikipedia: Yellow-throated toucan read 4 November 2026
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow-throated_toucan