Eumomota

The turquoise-browed motmot (Eumomota superciliosa) is a colourful, medium-sized bird of the motmot family, Momotidae. It is the only species in its genus Eumomota. It inhabits Central America from south-east Mexico (mostly the Yucatán Peninsula), to Costa Rica, where it is common and not considered threatened. It lives in fairly open habitats such as forest edge, gallery forest and scrubland. It has a preference for higher tree diversity and richness, alongside a low open canopy and dense understory. It also appears to prefer dry forest. This is in contrast to the other motmot known to inhabit the Yucatán, Lesson’s motmot, which prefers moist forest. As a result, their respective distributions allow ecologists to map the process of aridification induced by anthropogenic climate change. Some literature thus considers the turquoise-browed motmot to be a bioindicator.

The bird is 34 cm (13 in) long and weighs 65 g (2.3 oz). It has a mostly grey-blue body with a rufous back and belly. There is a bright blue strip above the eye and a blue-bordered black patch on the throat. The flight feathers and upperside of the tail are blue. The tips of the tail feathers are shaped like rackets and the bare feather shafts, also classified as wires, are longer than in other motmots. Although it is often said that motmots pluck the barbs off their tail to create the racketed shape, this is not true; the barbs are weakly attached and fall off due to abrasion with substrates and with routine preening.