There was a great roman philosopher in the 1st century called Seneca the Elder who said “Give yourself time and room; what reason could not avoid, delay has often cured”
I find that I am reminded of this quote as I think of the toucans I saw a few months ago at the National Zoo in Washington DC. I had been meaning to write about them, but never really got around to it. The toucan is as tiny as a crow but with a spectacular beak that’s at least half as big as the rest of its body. As I was standing in front of their display admiring their bright, multicolored beaks, a birder and his wife came over. The man tilted his head slightly upwards and observed the bird keenly through his glasses and said “these guys love to be scratched”. I thought that was a very odd thing to say about a bird. I quickly asked “You mean petted?”. He nodded without looking at me and said “No, scratched.” I said, “Wow, I would never have associated scratching with birds” At this point, he turned towards me and said “Oh no, it’s not unusual. A lot of birds love to be scratched and cuddled. They even purr when you show them affection.” I was amused to hear this, but still wanted to google to find out if what he said about scratching was true. In the mean time, I asked if they fly, to which he said “with some difficulty” and he wondered if it had anything to do with the size of the beak and I thought that was natural. I imagined that the beak probably weighed as much as the rest of its body, to which he responded that the beak is in fact hollow and therefore very light and is made of keratin, just like our fingernails, which is also why they are fugivorous and prefer small berries as they cannot bite or crunch food very well.
I rushed home and found a website that completely concurred with him. I wonder if his knowledge about the bird came from the very same source. I want to share other things I learnt from the website:

The function of their enormous bill has puzzled scientists for a long time. What use is such an instrument? It is not a weapon, the toucan's usual enemies being much too strong to be fooled by even the heftiest bill. It is not a special tool for gathering food, since all toucans are frugivorous, and eat berries, seeds, and ripe fruit. A shorter, more solid bill would do just as well! Some ornithologists think it is simply a distinguishing feature, a visual threat to would-be competitors. But this hypothesis is not very convincing, since the bill of both the male and the female is exactly the same. So the mystery of the toucan's bill remains unsolved!
Toucans are very noisy members of the jungle society, and live in smallish communities, equivalent to several families. They are related to the woodpeckers, and appropriate holes in tree trunks in the same way. One might well ask how a bird like a toucan manages to sleep at the bottom of a tight-fitting hole. Quite simply, it bends double; the beak is twisted round and rests on its back, its tail is folded up on to its breast, its wings wrap round the rest of its body - and voila! A feathery ball!
During their nuptial display, both partners play a game which consists of throwing berries to each other or tossing them between them with their beaks.

But, after obsessing over toucans these last few months, one visit to the Baltimore National Aquarium changed everything. I am preoccupied with Puffins now. They are the most adorable birds I have seen. They are black and white birds with bright red beaks and can be best placed between a parrot and a penguin. Yup! The impossible is possible. There was one particular puffin that was darn adorable. He wobbled towards the glass screen that stood between us and stared at the audience for quite some time before he dived into the water and swam away. I hear they even fly very well. A puffin’s wings can beat up to 400 times a minute and they move so fast that they become a blur and resemble a football. After seeing them wobble on the ground like a penguin, it was hard to envisage an efficiently flying bird. They are even called the "clowns of the sea". It seems, we got to see them before their bills turned from red to gray to adapt to winter and are usually brightest during spring time, which is their mating season.

We have lived in Washington DC for over four years now and yet, quite embarrassingly, this is the first time that I have taken an interest in watching the birds in the city. The ring-billed gulls that fly towards the on-lookers at the Capitol, the friendly mallards by the reflection-pools that allow tourists to pat them, the house sparrows at the plaza, the bluebirds in the backyard, the purple martins that we see once in the while, and the little red bird sitting on the snow covered branches in winter have come and gone without much fanfare. It’s time to rectify oversight and watch some birds! =)

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A few days ago, my brother went to his friend's farm in Mocaco, Brazil. When he saw this post on my blog, he wrote that he saw a couple of toucans flying around and sent me this picture of one on top of a tree.


I was so excited to hear that and could only imagine how much more exciting it must have been for him to have witnessed them flying at such close proximity. He also said, he saw a lot of other pretty birds in Brazil that I'm hoping he will share pictures of soon. I really wish I was there to see the birds myself. Maybe some day!

But, now I wonder what the birder meant when he said the toucans can fly "with some difficulty". My brother said they seemed to be flying very well. After I published this post yesterday, I also learnt from another site that they eat small insects, and therefore are not entirely frugivorous, even though they feed on fruit for most part. I wonder if I misunderstood the birder or if he didn't know much himself. They do have weak beaks, and cant crunch very well, so I think I should give him the benefit of the doubt! =)