The red-faced guan (''Penelope dabbenei'') is a species of

bird Birds are a group of warm-blooded vertebrates constituting the class Aves (), characterised by feathers, toothless beaked jaws, the laying of hard-shelled eggs, a high metabolic rate, a four-chambered heart, and a strong yet lightweigh ...

in the family

Cracidae The chachalacas, guans and curassows are birds in the family Cracidae. These are species of tropical and subtropical Central and South America. The range of one species, the plain chachalaca, just reaches southernmost parts of Texas in the Unite ...

, the

chachalaca Chachalacas are galliform birds from the genus ''Ortalis''. These birds are found in wooded habitats in the far southern United States (Texas), Mexico, and Central and South America. They are social, can be very noisy and often remain fairly c ...

guan Guan may refer to: * Guan (surname), several similar Chinese surnames ** Guān, Chinese surname * Guan (state), ancient Chinese city-state * Guan (bird), any of a number of bird species of the family Cracidae, of South and Central America * Guan ( ...

s, and

curassow Curassows are one of the three major groups of cracid birds. They comprise the largest-bodied species of the cracid family. Three of the four genera are restricted to tropical South America; a single species of ''Crax'' ranges north to Mexico. ...

s. It is found in

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

and

Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...

Taxonomy and systematics

At least one author has suggested that the red-faced guan should be treated as a subspecies of the

Andean guan The Andean guan (''Penelope montagnii'') is a gamefowl species of the family (biology), family Cracidae, in which it belongs to the guan (bird), guan subfamily Penelopinae. This bird occurs in the highlands (5,000 ft/1,500 m above mean sea l ...

(''Penelope montagnii'') and others have suggested a close relationship between it and the

dusky-legged guan The dusky-legged guan (''Penelope obscura'') is a species of bird in the family Cracidae, the chachalacas, guans, and curassows. It is found in Uruguay, northeastern Argentina and southernmost areas of Paraguay and Brazil. In early 2021, the form ...

(''P. obscura'') but later work refuted both treatments.Remsen, J. V., Jr., J. I. Areta, E. Bonaccorso, S. Claramunt, A. Jaramillo, D. F. Lane, J. F. Pacheco, M. B. Robbins, F. G. Stiles, and K. J. Zimmer. Version 24 August 2021. A classification of the bird species of South America. American Ornithological Society. https://www.museum.lsu.edu/~Remsen/SACCBaseline.htm retrieved August 24, 2021del Hoyo, J., G. M. Kirwan, and E. de Juana (2020). Red-faced Guan (''Penelope dabbenei''), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (J. del Hoyo, A. Elliott, J. Sargatal, D. A. Christie, and E. de Juana, Editors). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.refgua1.01 retrieved September 27, 2021 The red-faced guan is

monotypic In biology, a monotypic taxon is a taxonomic group (taxon) that contains only one immediately subordinate taxon. A monotypic species is one that does not include subspecies or smaller, infraspecific taxa. In the case of genera, the term "unispec ...

Description

The red-faced guan is long. One female weighed . It is rich brown overall with white or silvery flecking on the head, breast, and upper back. It has an obvious whitish

supercilium The supercilium is a plumage feature found on the heads of some bird species. It is a stripe which runs from the base of the bird's beak above its eye, finishing somewhere towards the rear of the bird's head.Dunn and Alderfer (2006), p. 10 Also ...

, bare pinkish red facial skin, and the red

dewlap A dewlap is a longitudinal flap of skin or similar flesh that hangs beneath the lower jaw or neck of many vertebrates. More loosely, it can be various similar structures in the neck area, such as those caused by a double chin or the submandibula ...

that is typical of its genus.

Distribution and habitat

The red-faced guan is found in a narrow band on the east side of the Andes of southern Bolivia and northwestern Argentina. It inhabits the

cloudforest A cloud forest, also called a water forest, primas forest, or tropical montane cloud forest (TMCF), is a generally tropical or subtropical, evergreen, montane, moist forest characterized by a persistent, frequent or seasonal low-level cloud c ...

of the

Yungas The Yungas (Aymara ''yunka'' warm or temperate Andes or earth, Quechua ''yunka'' warm area on the slopes of the Andes) is a bioregion of a narrow band of forest along the eastern slope of the Andes Mountains from Peru and Bolivia, and extends into ...

region and prefers extensive tracts of large trees. It does occasionally occur in smaller patches or in young

secondary forest A secondary forest (or second-growth forest) is a forest or woodland area which has re-grown after a timber harvest or clearing for agriculture, until a long enough period has passed so that the effects of the disturbance are no longer evident. ...

. In elevation it mainly ranges between but sometimes as low as .

Behavior

Movement

The red-faced guan is thought to be largely sedentary, but some altitudinal movement has been reported in Argentina.

Feeding

The red-faced guan usually forages in pairs but larger groups have been reported. It mostly forages in trees but also feeds on the ground. Its diet is mostly fruits and it also eats leaves and

arthropod Arthropods (, (gen. ποδός)) are invertebrate animals with an exoskeleton, a Segmentation (biology), segmented body, and paired jointed appendages. Arthropods form the phylum Arthropoda. They are distinguished by their jointed limbs and Arth ...

Breeding

The red-faced guan's breeding season has not been fully defined, but displaying and calling pairs have been documented between September and December. It builds a platform nest of twigs and stems lined with leaves and sited in a tree. The clutch size is three eggs.

Vocal and non-vocal sounds

The red-faced guan makes a wing-whirring display at dawn. Its song is "random-sounding gruff notes, given in level series". Its alarm call is "a loud, throaty and repeated 'kroa, kroa...' interspersed by whistled notes 'luuuii'."

Status

The

IUCN The International Union for Conservation of Nature (IUCN; officially International Union for Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources) is an international organization working in the field of nature conservation and sustainable use of natu ...

originally assessed the red-faced guan in 1988 as Threatened but since 2004 has rated it as being of Least Concern. Though it has a restricted range, it occurs in several protected areas and its generally remote and inaccessible habitat make for less hunting pressure than most other guans receive.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q1259911 red-faced guan Birds of the Southern Andean Yungas red-faced guan red-faced guan Taxonomy articles created by Polbot