Gasbag

Bird of the Day Series, Social Media Content

Photo: Charles J. Sharp

The Cuban Tody is a 4”, 2 oz beauty found throughout around the Caribbean, particularly in Cuba, where they are called ‘Pedorrera’ because of their pprreeee-pprreeee call which, dare I type it, translates to ‘string of farts’. This is off-set by the soft whirring sound of their wings. 

They live in thick, dark vegetation and hunt from low-level perches, sitting still before leaping up to snatch prey from twigs and leaves. They hunt from dawn to dusk, catching two insects per minute. They can do this because they have incredible flying speed, which makes photographing them difficult. Despite their colouring, and the fact that they’re usually in pairs, they’re hard to see.  

When they’re nesting, however, they’re easy to find. They make nests of 12” tunnels, sometimes using rotten tree trunks, but often burrowing into clay. They coat their tunnels with a kind of thick glue mixed with grass, lichen, algae, small feathers and other materials, then lay 3-4 eggs, which are incubated by both parents. Sadly, this makes them easy prey for mongoose—and, in poor areas, people. But they are not endangered and, luckily for them, are known to be terrible pets.