The toucan wears his beak, of course, where you would expect him to wear his nose. When you see him for the first time, you might think he is carrying a banana in his mouth. It is hard to believe that his over sized beak is real and you wonder whether there are clovno in the bird world who dress themselves up in false noses.

If you visit certain forested regions of South America, you soon learn to take the toucan and his whopping beak for granted. For this amazing fellow and some 36 of his cousins are quite common birds from sea level to far up the slopes of the Andes. He is a blackbird type fellow, though his plumage is usually adorned with patches of vivid color.

But his beak is far more noticeable than his plumage. It is usually some shade of yellow and often banded with black. You feel sure it cannot be real because the toucan does not seem strong enough to hold up such a giant beak. When you recover from your first astonishment, you see that the bulky beak is about half as long as his feather clad body. This is like having a nose somewhat larger than your two arms.

But the toucan manages his giant beak with the greatest of ease. He uses it to nibble fruit and seeds and to gobble up insects and birds eggs. He also uses his amazing beak to keep up a never ending conversation with his friends and relatives in the nearby tree tops.

The noisy conversation makes no sense to us, for the same word is used over and over again. Most of the toucan cousins use the word Too Kan Oh   which is how the strange birds got their name. Some squawk and some shriek, and none of them have pleasant voices.

Each time a toucan says his name, his big beak goes straight up into the air. This is no strain at all, for the amazing beak is made of very light material. It is very strong, though it weighs practically nothing at all. The toucan is very proud of his huge beak and takes great care of it. When night falls, he bends his head back and sideways with his big beak resting tenderly among his feather. Then he lifts up his tail and covers it gently with a feathery blanket,

The toucan is a distant relative of the woodpecker, though he looks like no other bird in the world, He may be as big as a crow or smaller than a black bird, but a third of his length will be occupied by his bulky beak. His nest is a hole high in a tree and he likes to live where he has plenty of toucan neighbors in the nearby branches.