Grey-winged Trumpeter

Overview

The grey-winged trumpeter is a chicken-like bird belonging to the family Psophiidae. It is a resident of the northern Amazon Basin and is classified as Least Concern by the IUCN Red List.

Identification

• Chicken-like appearance with a long neck, long legs, and a hump-backed profile.
• Plumage is mostly black with ashy grey inner wings and rump; the middle of the back is ochre to chestnut.
• Stout, slightly decurved, yellowish-green bill and greenish-olive legs and feet.
• Low humming song described as "wuh-wuh-wuh wuh wuh - -" and a loud, harsh "GRAH" alarm call.

Habitat

Found in Brazil, Colombia, Ecuador, French Guiana, Guyana, northern Peru, Suriname, and Venezuela north of the Amazon River. It inhabits dense lowland tropical rainforest, favouring open understories with fruiting trees away from human habitations, though it occasionally enters higher elevation cloudforest.

Diet

Primarily feeds on soft fruit that has fallen to the forest floor, often fruit knocked loose by squirrel monkeys or arboreal birds. Approximately 10% of its diet consists of small arthropods, some captured while following army ant swarms, and it rarely eats small vertebrates.

Did you know?

Indigenous peoples tame these birds as sentinels because of their predator-spotting abilities and loud alarm calls, and they are also believed to kill snakes.