Collared Aracari captured by Z 9 / Z600f4 TC @840mm handheld
You might be saying, “that looks like a toucan” and you’d be saying the same thing I did the first time I saw the Collared Aracari last week in Cost Rica. It is not, its a Aracari and they are quite the characters. Perhaps half the size of a typical toucan, they forage in the under-story below the toucans. They hop along the branches as if sneaking up on the hanging fruit and then grabbing them. Looking up through the canopy with the naked eye, they are very hard to see even with those colors. But when you did, you could watch them after grabbing their food, what seemed like, playing with it. I believe, and I could be wrong, they were getting the fruit off the big seed and it was the seed they seemed to be juggling, like a clown would. I personally found it very entertaining helping some of the lulls in the shooting go by with a smile, the canopy clowns.