Tody Motmot

Hylomanes momotula, the first part of the scientific name coming from the Greek word hulos, meaning forest and mania, meaning passion, our Tody Motmot is a passionate of the forest! Ornithology is a science, however sometimes taxonomy begins with a spelling mistake! The first Tody Motmot was certainly seen by a Spanish naturalist, Francisco Hernandez (1514-1578) who conducted the first scientific expedition in Central America. When he returned to Spain, another Spanish naturalist, Juan Eusebio Nieremberg y Ottin (1595-1658) copied the descriptions of his colleague by making a spelling mistake: momot will become Tody Motmot. Studies done on the work of Francisco Hernandez show that he used the language Nahuatl spoken by the Aztecs to describe the birds, momot coming from momotla which can be translated as one who throws himself to the ground and which describes the hunting behavior of the Tody Motmots. The Tody Motmot is the smallest of the species, from 16 to 18 cm, the head is voluminous, the slightly curved beak is strong and long with a black upper jaw, the lower jaw being beige. The base of the whitish-cream forehead extends under the huge black eye with a large line of the same color and the thick black eyebrow line makes up the back of the eye, the turquoise-blue eyebrows bring a colorful and luminous touch to the head. The crown and the nape are brownish-chestnut while the mantle and the back take on a dark green color, the great coverings and the wing feathers darken and become gray-green; the throat is whitish and the breast hesitates between green and gray-green, the belly turning to a dirty white color. The tail is very short, the central feathers remain greenish and the outer feathers are gray, the tarsi are light brown to dark brown. The dimorphism is mainly marked by the size, the female being smaller, the juveniles have a hesitant and quite dull coloring, the crown and the nape are pale gray-brown.There are three subspecies recognized, Hylomanes momotula from which the species gets its name, ssp chiapensis which has the same colors but darker, and ssp obscurus which accentuates the phenomenon and is even darker than chiapensis.