White-throated toucan

The white-throated toucan (Ramphastos tucanus) is a near-passerine bird found throughout the Amazon in south-eastern Colombia, eastern Ecuador, eastern Peru, northern Bolivia, southern and eastern Venezuela, northern and western Brazil, including the Amazon Basin's adjacent Tocantins-Araguaia River drainage, and the Guianas. It prefers tropical humid forest, but also occurs in woodland and locally in riverine forest within the Cerrado.

It was formerly considered to be two species, with the southern and western nominate subspecies, R. t. tucanus, named the red-billed toucan, and the northern and eastern subspecies, R. t. cuvieri, Cuvier's toucan (when considered a species; R. cuvieri, Wagler, 1827). However, the two subspecies, which differ principally in the bill colour, interbreed freely wherever they meet and therefore merit only subspecies status. The subspecies R. t. inca from Bolivia is of questionable validity and may represent a stable hybrid population between tucanus and culminatus.