Well, it would actually have been pretty straight forward if Clements hadn't used the misleading Red-billed Toucan when he chose to consider tucanus & cuvieri conspecific in his 2005 update to ed. 5. For a long period these taxa were split, with R. tucanus appropriately named the Red-billed (the section of the bill which is black in Cuvier's is mainly dark reddish-brown in the Red-billed), and R. cuvieri being Cuvier's Toucan. However, these two interbreed absolutely freely whereever they meet; to the extend that a very large part of the combined distribution actually is inhabited by individuals exhibiting some level of intermediacy between the "true" taxa (the Channel-billed follows a comparable pattern, and it too has been split into multiple species on occasion. If following this taxonomy, "your" Channel-billed would be a Yellow-ridged Toucan, R. culminatus). So, following BSC, tucanus and cuvieri clearly are part of a single species, as also realized by Howard & Moore and SACC several years ago. Anyhow, Clements kept them as separate species until the 2005 update to his 5th edition, where they were combined (likewise was done to the Channel-billed complex, which he previously had split into multiple spp.). That was all fine, except that he annoyingly kept "Red-billed Toucan" for the combined species rather than using the already well established White-throated (this is the name of choice in e.g. Birds of Ecuador and HBW), which is fitting for both tucanus and cuvieri. As many birders follow Clements, this means that a lot of people unfortunately and confusingly are using Red-billed Toucan as the English name when they see the black-billed cuvieri. So, the bird on your photo is:

* Cuvier's Toucan (R. cuvieri), as per "old Clements".
* Red-billed Toucan (R. tucanus cuvieri), as per "new Clements".
* White-throated Toucan (R. tucanus cuvieri), as per Howard & Moore and SACC.

As presumably evident, I strongly favour the last option, though using Cuvier's for cuvieri and Red-billed for tucanus (sensu stricto) is fine, as long as people realize they are names for subspecies (per BSC).

For the purposes of the field guide pool, I've added the Clements 5th ed. (2005) tags.

Hi, I'm an admin for a group called The Friends Of Worldbirds, and we'd love to have this added to the group!
brilliant shot and great info

so you mind if i use this pic for my project?

Hi lyndsay, that would be fine... Kent