Toucans utter, from time to time, harsh, clattering, and discordant cries. "Some," says Mr. Gould, "frequent the humid woods of the temperate regions, while others resort to comparatively colder districts, and dwell at an elevation of from six to ten thousand feet. Those inhabiting the lofty regions are generically different from those residing in the low lands, and are clothed in a more thick and sombre-coloured plumage. All the members of the Hill-Toucans are distinguished by their bills being strong, heavy, and hard, when compared with those of the true Toucans and Araçaris, all of which have their bills of a more delicate structure, and in several species so thin and elastic on the sides as to be compressible between the fingers." Their food in a state of nature consists of fruit, eggs, and nestling birds; to which, in domestication, are added small birds, mice, caterpillars, and raw flesh. They incubate in the hollows of gigantic trees. Faber was told by Fryer, Alaysa, and other Spaniards who had lived long in America, and also by the Indians, that the Toucan even hews out holes in trees, in which to nidify; and Oviedo adds, that it is from this habit of chipping the trees that the bird is called by the Spaniards _Carpintero_, and by the Brazilians _Tacataca_, in imitation, apparently, of the sound it thus makes. The larger feed upon bananas and other succulent plants; the smaller upon the smaller fruits and berries. Prince Maximilian de Wied states, that in Brazil he found only the remains of fruits in their stomachs, and adds, that they make sad havoc among plantations of fruit-trees. He was informed, however, that they steal and eat birds, but never himself saw them in the act. They abound in the vast forests, and are killed in great number in the cooler season in the year for the purposes of the table. In their manners the Toucans resemble the Crow tribe, and especially the Magpies: like them, they are very troublesome to the birds of prey, particularly to the Owls, which they surround, making a great noise, all the while jerking their tails upwards and downwards. Their feathers, especially from their yellow breasts, are used by the Indians for personal decoration. Azara states that they attack even the solid nests of the white ants, when the clay of which their nests are formed becomes moistened with the rain; they break them up with their beaks, so as to obtain the young ants and their eggs; and during the breeding season the Toucan feeds upon nothing else; during the rest of the year he subsists upon fruit, insects, and the buds of trees.