Great Curassow

Occasionally, usually near dawn or dusk, you might see a pair of secretive Great Curassows sneaking through the forest or dashing across a dirt road in relatively undisturbed forests. Related to chickens, Great Curassows mate for life, are devoted to each other, and care for their chicks (only two per clutch) together. 

If you spot them separately, you might not suspect they are the same species. The female, as you can see in the picture, is colored a flashy orange and cinnamon, with a lacy white collar and a perm with highlights. Females I saw in Costa Rica had brilliantly black-and-white barred tails, but here I’ve only seen dark tails. So far. Check them out here. 

The male, on the other hand, is severely handsome in black and white, with flashy ebony curls and an amazing yellow knob on his bill called a carunkle for attracting females. Check the carunkle out here, and listen to him whistle.  

About the size of a turkey, a curassow weighs in at 10 pounds, with the male slightly heavier than the female. Its main food is on the ground – fallen fruits, snails, lizards, and insects, but it nests and roosts high in the trees, and it sometimes feeds in the canopy if it finds a tree loaded with a preferred fruit or a hatch of edible caterpillars.

The curassow doesn’t do well in built-up areas, and is in decline because of serious habitat loss. Some locals hunt it for food, as well, so it faces an uncertain future. But you can see it here at Better in Belize, and if you’re lucky, you’ll spot a pair some day. There are three protected areas managed by Ya’axché Conservation Trust and a few other healthy forested areas in Belize that are critical for their continued survival. Great Curassow survival is one of the reasons dogs are not allowed to run loose at Better in Belize.

Locals say that if they cook a curassow that has been browsing on che-chem (poisonwood) berries, they’re careful to burn the bones because their dogs will die if they eat the bone marrow.