bill bird

See also: bill-bird

English

Alternative forms

• bill-bird

Noun

bill bird (plural bill birds)

1. (obsolete) A toucan.
   • William Dampier (1729) chapter II, in A Collection Of Voyages: Volume III, London: James and John Knapton, page 402: “The Greater Bill-bird or Toucan. It's Breast is bright Gold, the Belly and Thighs red, Tail black tipt with red.”
   • Alan Tennant (2010) On the Wing: To the Edge of the Earth with the Peregrine Falcon, New York: Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group, →ISBN: “Protected as Belize's national "bill bird," the keel-billed toucan occupies a safeguarded riparian habitat that also preserves the home of every howler monkey, crested guan, and hickatee river turtle that lives along the watercourse.”