Prong-billed Barbet

The prong-billed barbet is 17 to 18.5 cm (6.7 to 7.3 in) long and weighs about 60 to 70 g (2.1 to 2.5 oz). Its bill is silvery gray to bluish with a dark tip; a notch on the tip of the mandible provides its English name. The maxilla has a hooked tip and a notch on the side. Adults have a dull golden brown crown, brownish olive nape and upper back, and olive green lower back, rump, and uppertail coverts. Males have a glossy black tuft of feathers at the rear of the crown; females lack it. Both sexes have dull slaty black lores, cheeks, and chin. The sides of their head, their neck, and their upper breast are buffy olive that becomes yellowish on the lower breast. Their belly's center is pale yellow and their flanks dull grayish with a pale yellowish wash. Their tail is dull green and their wings dusky. Immatures are overall duller than adults and the black areas of the adult's face are grayer in immatures.

The prong-billed barbet is found in the mountains from Costa Rica's Cordillera de Tilarán to western Panama's Veraguas Province. In elevation it mostly ranges between 750 and 2,450 m (2,500 and 8,000 ft) on the Caribbean side of Costa Rica, between 1,500 and 1,450 m (4,900 and 4,800 ft) on the Pacific side, and between 1,500 and 2,250 m (4,900 and 7,400 ft) in Panama. (Locally it occurs somewhat lower in both countries.) It inhabits the interior and edges of extremely humid montane evergreen forest, a landscape characterized by many epiphytes and mosses and frequent fog.

Prong-billed barbets usually forage in the forest canopy but sometimes do so lower at the edges. Their diet is almost entirely fruit, but young nestlings are fed insects. Small fruits are swallowed whole or only the interior may be squeezed out. Large fruits are torn apart to eat.