Habit and Diet
This bird spends most of the day singing and foraging for food in the forest canopy. Otherwise well camouflaged, their rapid and extraordinary loud "tehoop-tehoop-tehoop-tehoop" call often betrays their presence.
Golden-whiskered Barbets are frugivores that gorge themselves on berries, figs, and any edible fruits they can find. A bird watcher colorfully described the Golden-whiskered Barbet eating papayas in a private fruit orchard by writing:
What a glutton he was to possessively grab a chunk of the succulent fruit with his left claw; clung on the tree trunk with his right footed zygodactylous toes and demolishing another chunk of fleshy papaya breakfast in his honky beak...too engrossed in protecting his treasure trove of ripe and succulent papayas –spoilt for choice to take much notice of me...Having had his fill, the barbet did not fly away but stayed around the tree to engage in sentry duties under shade of a spoke like foliage...Occasionally, he would return for a symbolic peck and indulgence of the fruits. At other times, would fly to his shady, staging area for a quick snooze as expressed by his nictitating membrane, at the same time trying hard to possessively stay awake to watch his fruits...(he was also) seen to hastily chase off his mate. No other fruit eating species of smaller birds present around dared or were allowed to perch on the same tree...
According to the same report, the Golden-whiskered Barbet is selective in its choice of fruits upon which to feed and did not bother to peck on intact ripening fruits when there were better fresh choices to be had. Also partially insectivorous, the Golden-whiskered Barbet eats flying termites and has been observed digging into dead wood searching for food. It also feeds on seeds and even lizards and small birds like the Eurasian Tree Sparrow.
Read more about this topic: Golden-whiskered Barbet
Famous quotes containing the words habit and, habit and/or diet:
“Habit! that skillful but slow arranger, which starts out by letting our spirit suffer for weeks in a temporary state, but that the spirit is after all happy to discover, for without habit and reduced to its own resources, the spirit would be unable to make any lodgings seem habitable.”
—Marcel Proust (1871–1922)
“Distorting hackneyed words in hackneyed songs
He turns revolt into a style, prolongs
The impulse to a habit of the time.”
—Thom Gunn (b. 1929)
“Television programming for children need not be saccharine or insipid in order to give to violence its proper balance in the scheme of things.... But as an endless diet for the sake of excitement and sensation in stories whose plots are vehicles for killing and torture and little more, it is not healthy for young children. Unfamiliar as yet with the full story of human response, they are being misled when they are offered perversion before they have fully learned what is sound.”
—Dorothy H. Cohen (20th century)