The Red-billed Toucan or Cuvier's Toucan (Ramphastos tucanus cuvieri) is a brightly marked bird with a huge bill. It is found throughout the Amazon rainforest in countries such as Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia, Venezuela and Brazil. The only larger toucan is the toco toucan. The plumage is mostly black except for a white throat and chest bordered below with a narrow red line. The rump is bright yellow and the crissum is red. The bare skin around the eye is blue. The bill has a yellow tip, upper ridge and base of the upper mandible, and the base of the lower mandible is blue. The Cuvier's Toucan looks identical to the related Channel-billed Toucan 's subspecies culminatus:. However, the Channel-billed Toucan is smaller and has a proportionally shorter bill. The bird was formerly considered to be two species, with the southern and western nominate subspecies, R. t. tucanus, named the red-billed toucan, and the northern and eastern subspecies, R. t. cuvieri, Cuvier's toucan. However, the two subspecies, which differ principally in the bill colour, interbreed freely wherever they meet and therefore merit only subspecies status.
