Toco toucan

For all its size the bill weighs almost nothing. It is a shell of keratin over a lattice of hollow bony struts, mostly air, which is why a bird can carry something a third of its own length on the front of its head and still fly.

It is the largest toucan, and the one that lives in the most open country. Tocos are birds of cerrado, savanna, palm groves and gallery forest rather than deep rainforest, which is why the Pantanal is such a good place to see them.

They are not the fruit specialists the picture books suggest. Fruit is the bulk of it, but a toco will also take insects, lizards, and the eggs and nestlings of other birds, and small birds mob them accordingly.

The bill is a tool for reach as much as anything. It lets a heavy bird sitting on a solid branch strip fruit from thin twigs at the end of it that would never hold its weight.

They nest in tree cavities, and the fit is tight. A toucan roosting in a hole folds its tail up over its back and tucks the bill back under a wing to make itself small enough.