Hear the Staccato Call of the Tiny, Leaf-Green Cuban Tody
These hummingbird-sized jewels of the Caribbean are built for catching insects鈥攁nd they're unbelievably cute, too.
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Transcript:
This is BirdNote.
This staccato call comes from the throat of a Cuban Tody.
A bird that鈥檚 almost indescribably cute鈥攁nd the top of the must-see list of any birder heading for the West Indies. Because although it鈥檚 not much bigger than a hummingbird, a Cuban Tody packs a lot of pizzazz into its tiny body.
It鈥檚 big-headed. Short-tailed. Brilliant leaf-green with a geranium-red throat. And as if that weren鈥檛 enough to be noticed, the Cuban species features a touch of blue on the sides of its throat. Its long, flattened bill looks like it鈥檚 built for insect-catching. And indeed it is.
In woodlands throughout the island of Cuba, todies are terrific foragers. In fact, their Puerto Rican cousins have been known to catch up to one or two insects a minute, hunting from dawn to dusk. Their wings make an audible whirring sound each time they do this, and you may find a tody just by listening for that sound.
Don鈥檛 take our word for it鈥攖o see these birds for yourself, check out our gallery at BirdNote.org.
I鈥檓 Michael Stein.
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Credits:
Music and bird sounds provided by The Macaulay Library of Natural Sounds at the Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, New York. 'Traditional Cuban Music' 62981 recorded on the roof of the Libertad Hotel, Santiago by Gregory F Budney; Cuban Tody 112183 recorded by Gregory F Budney.
BirdNote's theme music was composed and played by Nancy Rumbel and John Kessler.
Producer: John Kessler
Narrator: Michael Stein
Executive Producer: Dominic Black
Written by Dennis Paulson
漏 2014 Tune In to Nature.org September 2014 / September 2018