Bearded Barbets, Lybius dubius

By Eric C

The Bearded Barbet is a West and Central African species that is about 25cm long and attractively coloured in black, red and cream. The sexes are easily distinguished as the hen has some black spots on the cream flank feathers. The sexes can be distinguished at fledging. There is a tuft of bristle-like feathers below the large, double-toothed bill, hence the common name.

This is essentially a fruit-eating species and my birds are fed on a selection of fruits such as pear, tomato, kiwi fruit, banana, plums etc, all chopped to a size suitable for swallowing. Apple is not favoured and while the birds readily take blueberries they have never shown interest in blackberries, strawberries or raspberries. All fruit is dusted with Milupa baby cereal to increase the protein content for the birds will only take softfood if there is no fruit available and they are reluctant to take fruit that has been dusted with softfood. Generally speaking they show very little interest in livefood except when there are young in the nest, at which time mealworms are taken, although the young are also fed on fruit from a very early age.

I acquired my first Bearded Barbets (one cock and three hens) in 1997, they bred the following year and young have been produced most years since then. I am now breeding from birds that have been bred here. This year I have just a single breeding pair, housed in an aviary that is approximately 2.4m deep x 1.5m wide x 1.8m high. While the aviary is sheltered, there is no inside portion but the birds always roost in a log and I have keep barbets in this aviary over the years without any problems. The aviary is partly planted and is supplied with two old silver birch or poplar logs that the birds have excavated to form roosting and nesting facilities. Eventually these logs become so full of holes that they have to be replaced. The barbets have never shown any interest in nest boxes (apart from drilling holes in the sides) so nesting progress must be inferred from the behaviour of the birds.

This year the hen barbet disappeared into the log in early April, so it was assumed that eggs must have been laid. Only the hen incubates. As it is suggested that the incubation period for these barbets is about 16 days a pot of mealworms was supplied each morning around the expected time of hatching and the behaviour of the cock was monitored. At least another week elapsed before the cock started to take mealworms into the log so possibly the hen had been spending time in the log prior to laying. From this point on approximately a serving-spoon portion of mealworms was supplied three times daily until after the young fledged. About 7 or 8 mealworms were taken into the nest at a time, most being carried in the throat, with only the last couple carried in the bill. The young remain in the nest for quite the considerable length of time of 38 – 40 days. On fledging they are just slightly smaller than the adults and the red is not quite as bright. The most noticeable difference is the much shorter beak which at this stage has no ‘teeth’. The young were removed from the aviary around the time that the next eggs were laid to avoid any problems. There was no aggression shown towards the young and in the wild young of earlier broods have been seen to help with subsequent nests but as both the cock and the young slept in the nest with the incubating hen I felt that there was a danger that the eggs might have been damaged. Three young fledged from this first nest and the pair went on to have two more nests, each producing a single chick.
It should not be too difficult to establish a viable aviary population of this species, provided that there are sufficient numbers of birds around to set up unrelated pairs. They are easily managed, have the advantage of being visually sexable and appear to breed readily although I suspect that a supply of suitable logs is a necessity. Fresh logs are too hard for the birds to excavate and I have always used logs that are just beginning to crumble. There is the added advantage that the birds are not too dependent on livefood when rearing young.