The blue-throated motmot (''Aspatha gularis'') is a

species A species () is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate sexes or mating types can produce fertile offspring, typically by sexual reproduction. It is the basic unit of Taxonomy (biology), ...

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class (biology), class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the Oviparity, laying of Eggshell, hard-shelled eggs, a high Metabolism, metabolic rate, a fou ...

in the family Momotidae. It is found in

El Salvador El Salvador, officially the Republic of El Salvador, is a country in Central America. It is bordered on the northeast by Honduras, on the northwest by Guatemala, and on the south by the Pacific Ocean. El Salvador's capital and largest city is S ...

Guatemala Guatemala, officially the Republic of Guatemala, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the north and west by Mexico, to the northeast by Belize, to the east by Honduras, and to the southeast by El Salvador. It is hydrologically b ...

Honduras Honduras, officially the Republic of Honduras, is a country in Central America. It is bordered to the west by Guatemala, to the southwest by El Salvador, to the southeast by Nicaragua, to the south by the Pacific Ocean at the Gulf of Fonseca, ...

, and

Mexico Mexico, officially the United Mexican States, is a country in North America. It is the northernmost country in Latin America, and borders the United States to the north, and Guatemala and Belize to the southeast; while having maritime boundar ...

Taxonomy and systematics

The blue-throated motmot is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unisp ...

. It apparently has no close relatives.Snow, D. and G. M. Kirwan (2020). Blue-throated Motmot (''Aspatha gularis''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.bltmot1.01 retrieved May 4, 2021

Description

The blue-throated motmot is long and weighs . It has a long, graduated, tail that in contrast to that of most other motmots does not have racquet tips. The side of the adult's head is ochre with a black "ear" spot. It is mostly green above and paler green below. The throat is blue with a black spot just below it. The juvenile is duller and the green of the back is washed with olive.

Distribution and habitat

The blue-throated motmot is found from

Oaxaca Oaxaca, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Oaxaca, is one of the 32 states that compose the political divisions of Mexico, Federative Entities of the Mexico, United Mexican States. It is divided into municipalities of Oaxaca, 570 munici ...

and

Chiapas Chiapas, officially the Free and Sovereign State of Chiapas, is one of the states that make up the Political divisions of Mexico, 32 federal entities of Mexico. It comprises Municipalities of Chiapas, 124 municipalities and its capital and large ...

in Mexico south and east through Guatemala and a bit of El Salvador to Honduras. It inhabits montane evergreen and pine forest of medium to high humidity. In elevation it ranges from in Mexico but in Honduras it is not found below .

Behavior

Feeding

The blue-throated motmot forages by plucking insects, especially beetles, from foliage while flying. It also eats some fruit and apparently feeds fruit to nestlings.

Breeding

The blue-throated motmot nests in a burrow that it excavates in an earth bank; the burrows can be up to long and often have bends in them. In Guatemala it lays eggs in April, and a fledgling was collected in late May in Mexico. The clutch size is three.

Vocalization

The blue-throated motmot typically calls from a high exposed perch. It usually gives single "hoot" or "huuk" note

but sometimes strings them together as "hoodloodloodloodl...

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natural resources. Founded in 1948, IUCN has become the global authority on the status ...

has assessed the blue-throated motmot as being of

Least Concern A least-concern species is a species that has been evaluated and categorized by the International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN) as not being a focus of wildlife conservation because the specific species is still plentiful in the wil ...

. Though its population appears to be decreasing, its population and range are large enough to achieve that rating

References

External links

Image at ADW
{{Taxonbar, from=Q1123969 blue-throated motmot Birds of Mexico Birds of Guatemala Birds of Honduras blue-throated motmot Taxonomy articles created by Polbot