The Russet-throated Puffbird (Hypnelus ruficollis) is a near-passerine bird

Bird

Birds are feathered, winged, bipedal, endothermic , egg-laying, vertebrate animals. Around 10,000 living species and 188 families makes them the most speciose class of tetrapod vertebrates. They inhabit ecosystems across the globe, from the Arctic to the Antarctic. Extant birds range in size from...

 which breeds in tropical South America

South America

South America is a continent situated in the Western Hemisphere, mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere. The continent is also considered a subcontinent of the Americas. It is bordered on the west by the Pacific Ocean and on the north and east...

 in northeastern Colombia

Colombia

Colombia, officially the Republic of Colombia , is a unitary constitutional republic comprising thirty-two departments. The country is located in northwestern South America, bordered to the east by Venezuela and Brazil; to the south by Ecuador and Peru; to the north by the Caribbean Sea; to the...

 and much of Venezuela

Venezuela

Venezuela , officially called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela , is a tropical country on the northern coast of South America. It borders Colombia to the west, Guyana to the east, and Brazil to the south...

, It is commonly named in Colombia as Bobito,Utta, Tol and Coludo.

The puffbird

Puffbird

The puffbirds and their relatives in the near passerine family Bucconidae are tropical birds breeding from South America up to Mexico.They are related to the jacamars, but lack the iridescent colours of that family. They are mainly brown, rufous or grey, with large heads and flattened bills with a...

s are an insectivorous bird family related to the jacamar

Jacamar

The jacamars are a family, Galbulidae, of near passerine birds from tropical South and Central America, extending up to Mexico. The order contains five genera and 18 species...

s, but lacking the iridescent

Iridescence

Iridescence is generally known as the property of certain surfaces which appear to change color as the angle of view or the angle of illumination changes...

 colours of that group. The Russet-throated Puffbird is fairly common in dry scrub and dry forest. It excavates a burrow in an arboreal termite

Termite

Termites are a group of eusocial insects that, until recently, were classified at the taxonomic rank of order Isoptera , but are now accepted as the epifamily Termitoidae, of the cockroach order Blattodea...

 colony, and lays three white eggs

Egg (biology)

An egg is an organic vessel in which an embryo first begins to develop. In most birds, reptiles, insects, molluscs, fish, and monotremes, an egg is the zygote, resulting from fertilization of the ovum, which is expelled from the body and permitted to develop outside the body until the developing...

.

The Russet-throated Puffbird is typically 22 cm long and weighs 50 g. It is a dumpy bird with a large head, long tail and a thick black hooked-tipped bill. The face is mainly white with a large yellow eye. The upperparts are brown, with whitish spotting and white wing tips.

The underparts vary considerably. The two western subspecies

Subspecies

Subspecies in biological classification, is either a taxonomic rank subordinate to species, ora taxonomic unit in that rank . A subspecies cannot be recognized in isolation: a species will either be recognized as having no subspecies at all or two or more, never just one...

 have an off-white throat, buff underparts, and two dark brown chest bands, and are sometimes split as a separate species, Two-banded Puffbird (H. bicinclus (Gould

John Gould

John Gould was an English ornithologist and bird artist. The Gould League in Australia was named after him. His identification of the birds now nicknamed "Darwin's finches" played a role in the inception of Darwin's theory of evolution by natural selection...

), 1837). The three subspecies found in Colombia and in Venezuela east of the Andes have a single breast band, a deep rufous throat and whitish or buff underparts.

This insectivore

Insectivore

An insectivore is a type of carnivore with a diet that consists chiefly of insects and similar small creatures. An alternate term is entomophage, which also refers to the human practice of eating insects....

 hunts from a perch, sitting and watching, then flying down to catch insect

Insect

Insects are a class of living creatures within the arthropods that have a chitinous exoskeleton, a three-part body , three pairs of jointed legs, compound eyes, and two antennae...

s, lizard

Lizard

Lizards are a widespread group of squamate reptiles, with nearly 3800 species, ranging across all continents except Antarctica as well as most oceanic island chains...

s and other small prey.

The Russet-throated Puffbird's call is a long series of woduk notes, often given synchronously by a pair of birds.