Bellbird
The bare throated bellbird is one of the most remarkable birds of the Atlantic Forest. Males are unmistakable: pure white plumage, bare turquoise skin with black bristles around the eyes and throat, and a metallic call that sounds like a hammer striking an anvil, ranks among the loudest produced by any bird on Earth and carries well over a kilometer through dense canopy. Females look entirely different, dressed in olive green with yellowish, streaked underparts that blend into the forest foliage. The species lives almost exclusively in the canopy layer, where it feeds on fleshy fruits from trees such as figs and laurels. By swallowing fruits whole and moving through the forest, bellbirds disperse seeds across large distances, making them a key driver of forest regeneration. It is the national bird of Paraguay, and in Brazil it is known as the araponga. The IUCN lists it as Near Threatened, with deforestation in the Atlantic Forest and trapping for the cage bird trade as the greatest threats to its survival.
Habitat and distribution
The bare throated bellbird is native to the Atlantic Forest, one of the most biodiverse and threatened biomes on the planet. Its range spans eastern and southern Brazil, eastern Paraguay, and the province of Misiones in northeastern Argentina. Within this region it favors the interior of tall humid forests, spending most of its life in the upper canopy where fruiting trees are most abundant. The species is not a strict resident in any single area. It performs seasonal altitudinal movements, descending to lower elevations during cooler months in search of fruit. Because it depends on large, continuous forest patches to find enough food and suitable nesting sites, it is particularly vulnerable to the fragmentation that has reduced the Atlantic Forest to roughly a tenth to an eighth of its original extent.
What does a bellbird sound like?
The male's call is a single, explosive metallic note, often described as a hammer striking an anvil or a bell being hit hard, repeated from a high perch over and over through much of the day. In Brazil that sound gave the bird the nickname ferreiro, the blacksmith. It is one of the loudest calls of any bird and can be heard more than a kilometer away through the forest, which is why people usually hear a bellbird long before they see one. The famous record of about 125 decibels, the loudest bird call ever measured, belongs to its relative the white bellbird of the Amazon, measured in a 2019 study; the bare throated bellbird has not been measured the same way, but it is in the same league. Producing such a call takes powerful muscles in the syrinx, the bird's voice box, a lot of air pressure from the air sacs and a very wide gape that projects the sound. The bare skin of the throat, turquoise with black bristles, gives the species its name. The male's white plumage works as a visual signal in the bright canopy, while the olive green of the female gives her camouflage in the foliage where she nests, one of the sharpest differences between the sexes among cotingas.
Behavior and social life
Outside the breeding season, this cotinga leads a largely solitary life. Males spend much of the year perched high in the canopy, calling persistently from exposed branches to establish their presence and attract females. Each male has his own favorite calling perches, usually spaced well apart from those of other males rather than packed together. Breeding takes place from about September to February, in the southern spring and summer. The female alone builds the nest, incubates the single egg, and raises the chick, receiving no assistance from the male. Diet consists almost entirely of large, fleshy fruits, which the bird swallows whole. Foraging journeys can cover considerable distances through the canopy, and this wide movement range makes the bellbird an effective disperser of seeds over long distances.
White bellbird and other birds called bellbird
The name bellbird is used for several different birds around the world, which is why searches for it can be confusing. The bare throated bellbird belongs to the genus Procnias, a group of four cotingas found only in the American tropics. Its closest relatives are the white bellbird, which lives in the Amazon and the Guianas and holds the record for the loudest bird call ever measured, around 125 decibels, and whose male has a long black wattle hanging from the bill; the three wattled bellbird of Central America, a brown and white bird with three wormlike wattles; and the bearded bellbird of northern South America and Trinidad, whose throat is covered in black, beardlike wattles. All four share loud, metallic calls and white or partly white males. On the other side of the world, the New Zealand bellbird, or korimako, is a completely unrelated olive green honeyeater found only in New Zealand, famous for its liquid, bell like song. In Australia, the name is used for the crested bellbird of the dry interior and for the bell miner, a small green honeyeater of eastern forests whose tinkling calls also gave their name to places such as Bellbird Park, in Queensland. Only the bare throated bellbird is covered on this page.
Conservation
The IUCN lists the bare throated bellbird as Near Threatened. It is not yet in one of the threatened categories, but it has declined because of the ongoing destruction of the Atlantic Forest, and at the national level the picture is worse: it is considered Endangered in both Paraguay and Argentina. Today this biome covers only about a tenth of its historical area in the coastal states of Brazil, with most remaining fragments too small and isolated to support healthy populations of species that depend on the canopy. Deforestation for agriculture, cattle ranching, and urban expansion continues to reduce and degrade suitable habitat. The second big problem is trapping. Of all the cotingas, the bellbird is the one most sought after for the cage bird trade, especially in Brazil, where its loud call made the araponga a traditional cage bird, and illegal capture has emptied it from forests that still look intact. Conservation efforts focus on protecting and connecting forest remnants through biological corridors, restoring degraded land, and enforcing wildlife laws in Brazil, Paraguay, and Argentina. Because the bellbird plays a key role in dispersing the seeds of canopy trees with large fruits, protecting this species also benefits the regeneration of the broader forest ecosystem.
