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The Grey-winged Trumpeter
The Grey-winged Trumpeter
The elusive Grey-winged Trumpeter birds are found in mature moist tropical forests, away from all human activity. They pick up ripe fruits off the forest floor, or remove it from small plants. Trumpeters gather in large flocks in forest clearings to perform elaborate and noisy courtship dances. These involve much strutting and leaping, and sometimes even somersaulting. The fruit-eating trumpeters pass the seeds intact, and in this way they help disperse fruit trees in the forest.
The Grey-winged Trumpeter (Psophia crepitans) is a member of a small family of birds, the Psophiidae, which occur only in the Amazon basin in tropical South America, including here in Guyana. There are three trumpeter species, all in the genus Psophia, the other two being the Pale-winged Trumpeter and the Dark-winged Trumpeter.
The Grey-winged Trumpeter is a dumpy, guinea fowl-like bird with a long neck and legs, and short yellow chicken-like bill. It is 48-56 cm long and 1.3 kg in weight. The soft plumage is mainly black, but the feathers of the inner wing are grey.
These are gregarious forest birds which nest in hollow trees, laying 3-4 white eggs that are incubated by all members of a group of five or more birds. When not breeding, the flocks may number 50 or more. Their food is insects and fruit, picked off the ground. They are weak fliers, and will run by preference.
The Grey-winged Trumpeter’s song is a low humming, but its call, as its name suggests, is a very loud Jeek or honking Tzaak. This bird is kept as a pet by Amerindians, since it is easily tamed, hunts snakes, and is a very efficient sentinel, with its unique alarm call.
This specie has an extremely large range, and hence does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the range size criterion under the United Nations Conservation Union listings. (Extent of Occurrence 20,000 km2 combined with a declining or fluctuating range size, habitat extent/quality, or population size and a small number of locations or severe fragmentation). Despite the fact that the population trend appears to be decreasing, the decline is not believed to be sufficiently rapid to approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population trend criterion (30% decline over ten years or three generations).
The population size has not been quantified, but it is not believed to approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the population size criterion (10,000 mature individuals with a continuing decline estimated to be 10% in ten years or three generations, or with a specified population structure). For these reasons the specie is evaluated as Least Concern.
Some of the Trumpeter bird’s physical characteristics indicate a relationship with cranes; others show a similarity to rails. Overall, the bird looks rather like a pheasant-sized long-legged Guinea Fowl.
The bird’s strongly arched wings, always held somewhat spread, make it look larger than it actually is, but the long, curved neck appears thin because it is covered with closely-packed velvety feathers.
There is no difference in the coloration or size of the male and female. All three species of Trumpeter birds have beautiful gaudy plumage: black and purple shot with blue and green, ice-blue shot with bronze, or silver grey and other tints.
Trumpeters cover their territory in the dark rain forests following certain paths led by a particularly alert bird. They are silent unless disturbed, at which time they utter strange cries from which it gets its name. Strangely enough, it sounds nothing like a trumpet, so their name is something of a misnomer. The cries are uttered with a closed beak and come from deep within the bird’s body.
Trumpeters feed on both plant and animal material such as berries, grasshoppers, spiders and centipedes. They are particularly fond of termites and when large fruits fall to the forest floor, the Trumpeters have a feast.
At mating season, the birds are seen running and leaping like cranes. They are believed to nest in large tree cavities and usually have one clutch of seven eggs. The white eggs, which resemble small ostrich eggs, have a rough white shell. Nothing is known about the incubation period or rearing of the young. Under human care, only the female was observed sitting on the eggs.
In the wild, the Trumpeter bird avoids cultivated areas, so as the devastation of South American forests increases, the bird’s range shrinks. In zoos, the Trumpeter birds become very tame and seem to recognise strangers, announcing their arrival with a loud cackle.
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