Talk:Russet-throated puffbird

A question

In para 3, with its large head,...and hooked-tipped bill", if this bird has strange flying characteristics like the Shrike, then it surely sounds like a similar style evolutionary bird. (The old "Form following Function" saying of old.) The Loggerhead Shrike from here in the Sonoran Desert is a year round resident, and when overflow populations of the Northern Mockingbird, compete, they last throughout wet, desert spells, but cannot compete against the better adapted, lizard-hunter, omnivore, of the Loggerhead. Anyway this bird sure sounds similar. The loggerheads are often perched, elevated, and dive bomb upon their prey. So is this puffbird the South American equivalent, in the tropical NW S.Amer. of Colombia/Venezuela?.? .....///....."TheDesertDweller" out in the Sonoran Desert...Mmcannis 05:42, 9 November 2006 (UTC)

I think only in the very broad sense that it is a specialist sit-and-wait predator like the shrikes, and several birds of prey, and therefore has typical adaptations. However, the puffbirds are forest, not open country, birds. I suspect that mimids and proper raptors like Laughing Falcons fill more accurately fill the "shrike" ecological niche in SAm. jimfbleak 07:09, 9 November 2006 (UTC)