The Threatened Saffron Toucanet

The saffron toucanet (Pteroglossus bailloni) is a South American Toucan belongs to the family Ramphastidae. This bird can find in the Argentina, Brazil, and Paraguay. It is also called Baillon's toucan, banana toucan, saffron-colored Araçari-banana, and yellow toucanet. Despite its distinctive appearance, the bird has not been well studied and very little known about its natural history. The bird is usually seen in the canopy of humid and second growth forests in small groups, occasionally descending to visit feeding stations.

They are habitually quiet, secretive. It has long-tailed toucan with a length of 35 to 40cm. This is uniquely among toucans, overall saffron yellow. The tail is bit olive or darker, but rump, ocular skin. The patches on the basal half of the greenish horn bill are red with iris is pale yellowish. In Brazil, they mostly occur in lowland and montane regions mostly on slopes and besides streams.

Both, male and female have distinguished appearance. The appearance is so distinctive that traditionally classified in the monotypic genus Baillonius.  An adult male bird has golden head and breast, olive mantle with red rump. The male is also modestly sized toucan, with green, blue grey, and yellow grey color. Whereas, a female adult bird is same to male but have dark olive and less gold coloration with short bill.

Saffron Toucanet found in the Atlantic Forest of Argentina. It is believed the bird is part of an ancient stock that became isolated in the present Atlantic Forest from marine transgression, which couldn’t adapt and invade the Brazilian Savanna. The bird was found to be endemic and high sensitivity to the fragmentation. It is also observed that Saffron usually nest in abandoned woodpecker holes or other tree cavities.

Saffron Toucanet is a large gape frugivore, hence it has greater ability to carry larger seeds to new locations. This bird normally building nests in October had a cavity depth of 20 to 68cm at a 7 to 24 meters height. They like to build nests on Garapa and Aspidosperma australe.  The male bird courtship display is to involve singing and feeding the female and preen to each other.  

The female bird normally lay 2 to 3 eggs that are incubated by both parents for at least 16 to 17 days. Both parents feed the chicks, and the young fledge after about 6 weeks. The adults continue to feed them for several weeks after fledging. Saffron Toucanet prefers to eat fruit (palmito fruit), figs, and palm fruits, small animals (including smaller birds and their nestlings). The bird is higher risk of extinction due to habitat loss, degradation, hunting and being captured.

Sadly, Toucanet is presently on the threshold of extinction by Birdlife International. Moreover, they are famous bird for illegal bird trade and in danger from hunted by humans. It is imperative to focus on increasing the bird populations as 46 species are under threat of global extinction. Saffron Toucanet beauty is habitually its undoing, as it is captured illegally for the cage-bird trade.

The Blue Hole of Dwerja, Gozo

The Dwejra Gozo Blue Hole is another most popular diving site in Maltese archipelago, in the Mediterranean Sea. This site overlooks the beautiful Azure Window and starts in a fantastic 10m wide inland sea pool which leads into a large crevice and through to the open sea.

One can see a natural rock arch with crystal clear blue waters that is your doorway leading to the open sea. Gozo Blue Hole is a 15 meters deep and 10 meters wide underwater hole connected by a tunnel to the open sea.

Bromeliad – The Most Exotic Houseplant

Bromeliad fascinating plants are among the most exotic houseplants a gardener can grow and also among the easiest. Not a genus in themselves, but a large group of  genera they include Aechmea, Billbergia, Cryptanthus, Dyckia, Guzmania, Neoregelia, Nidularium, Tillandsia and a number of others. Bromeliads come from the jungles of South America.

Some are terrestrial, but many are air plants (epiphytes) living high up in the trees without any soil and taking nourishment only from whatever organic matter washes their way. They are not parasitic and do not draw nourishment from the trees themselves. Tree growing bromeliads catch rainwater in cuplike urns of leaves.

Bromeliads are grown mainly for their spectacular flowers, but the leaves are often particularly handsome too. A typical bromeliad has a rosette of leaves, sometimes soft and green, sometimes stiff and spiky with variegated markings.  A flower stalk usually emerges from the center of the rosette. The showiness of these flowers really lies in the brilliantly colored bracts that surround them, though the tinier flowers are also beautiful.

A plant blooms only once, but the flower is often extraordinarily long lasting, and bromeliad plants readily produce offshoots. You may remove these from the mother plant and report them or cut out the spent mother plant and let the cluster of new ones bloom together.

If you are looking for a bromeliad to start with try Aechmea fasciata. You might find itmarketed under various names such as “urn plant” or “silver vase”, but you will recognize it by its vase of stiff, tooth-edged green leaves, marked horizontally with silver bands. The flower spike has toothed bracts of a bright pink color; little blue-purple flowers nestle among pink spikes.

Best of all, this colorful spectacle lasts about six months. The plant grows 1 to 2 feet tall. Another gorgeous long blooming bromeliad is Guzmania  lingulata, which is about the same size, with long green, strap like leaves sometimes striped with purple and a red-orange cluster of bracts enclosing white flowers from late winter or summer. Bromeliads with stiff, variegated leaves like good, bright light and often will take some direct sun but don’t expose them to strong midday sun in summer those with softer, green leaves are fairly shade tolerant.

They do well under artificial lights. They are happiest in warm rooms 65-75 degrees at night even lower from Aechmea fasciata. Give them humid air and a very light, porous organic soil or soilless mix remembers that May bromeliads are air plants and their roots don’t normally grow in soil. Some gardeners grow the ephiphytic types on pieces of tree branch wrapped in moistened sphagnum moss, but a shallow clay pot will do fine.

You can allow the top inch or so of the pot to dry out between watering (over watering can lead to fungus diseases), but always keep the cup inside the leaves filled with water. Feed lightly a balanced liquid fertilizer at half the suggested strength added to the soil and cup once a month in spring and summer is about right. Propagate by dividing offsets with a knife and re potting them. 

Also Read: How to Grow Gorgeous Cyclamen Flower