Guardabarranco vs Blue-Crowned Motmot – the difference

After catching many glimpses over the past weeks, I finally had a wonderful view of a Guardabarranco, the national bird of Nicaragua, this morning.    It was just outside my bedroom window at La Mariposa Spanish School and EcoHotel and I managed to get a fairly good picture of it (see below on the right).

Many visitors to Nicaragua confuse the Blue-crowned Motmot (image on left; taken from the eating area at La Mariposa) with the Turquoise-browed Motmot (the Guardabarranco) so I thought I’d show that there are actually quite a few differences.

The easiest to spot at a distance is the difference between the tail feathers – the Guardabarranco has a large gap between the tail feathers and the tip of the tail, the Blue-crowned Motmot does not.   The colouring is also quite different (though harder to spot at a distance).

Really thrilled to have had a really great view of this wonderful bird 🙂