Nombre en español: Paujil Negro

Nombre en ingles: Black Curassow

Nombre científico: Crax alector

Familia: Cracidae

Canto: Gabriel Leite

El paujil culiblanco o pavón guayanés (Crax alector) es una especie de ave galliforme de la familia Cracidae que se encuentra en las selvas del norte de Brasil, este de Colombia, sur y este de Venezuela, Guyana, Guayana francesa y Surinam.

Descripción

Alcanza una longitud promedio de 92 cm. Plumas negras y brillantes, pero en el vientre y bajo la cola blancas. Cresta con plumas rizadas, en la hembra con canas, pico de punta gris con la base y la cera amarilla a anaranjada o rojiza. Patas color gris azulado.

Hábitat

Bosque húmedo tropical o bosque de galería a menos de 1.500 m.s.n.m.

Subespecies

Se conocen dos subespecies de Crax alector:

Crax alector alector, al oriente del río Negro, se distingue por la cera y la base del pico más amarilla.
Crax alector erythrognatha, en colombia y al occidente del río Negro y sur del Orinoco.

Black curassow

The black curassow (Crax alector), also known as the smooth-billed curassow and the crested curassow, is a species of bird in the family Cracidae, the chachalacas, guans, and curassows. It is found in humid forests in northern South America in Colombia, Venezuela, the Guianas and far northern Brazil. Introduced to Bahamas, Cuba, Jamaica, Haiti, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico and Lesser Antilles.^[ It is the only Crax curassow where the male and female cannot be separated by plumage, as both are essentially black with a white crissum (the area around the cloaca), and have a yellow (eastern part of its range) or orange-red (western part of its range) cere.

Taxonomy

There are two recognized subspecies:

C. a. alector (Linnaeus, 1766) – eastern Colombia and Venezuela south of the Orinoco River
C. a. erythrognatha (PL Sclater and Salvin, 1877) – extreme eastern Venezuela to the Guianas and Brazil north of the Amazon

Description

The black curassow is a large bird reaching about 900 millimetres (35 in) in length. The male has black upper parts glossed with a purplish sheen and an inconspicuous black crest. The skin at the base of the grey beak is yellow or orange but there are no knobs and wattles. The underparts are white. The female is similar but the crest is barred with white, and the juvenile is black, barred and mottled with reddish-brown and reddish-buff.

Behaviour

The black curassow is a largely ground-dwelling bird. It lives in the undergrowth in lowland forests and plantations and in riverside thickets. It mostly eats fruit, but also consumes buds, shoots, leaves, flowers, fungi and invertebrates. It nests a few meters above the ground in trees, the nest being a platform of sticks. Breeding takes place in the rainy season in Suriname while in French Guiana, young are reported in March and September.

Status

Although the black curassow is fairly common, populations have been declining because of habitat loss, trapping and hunting. These threats are likely to continue, and the International Union for Conservation of Nature rates the bird’s conservation status as «vulnerable».