Photo of a male white bellbird, made by J.S. Dunning?
This bird can often be heard in forested places above 500 meter like on the Brownsberg. Its sound (25 kB) is explosively loud and has a metallic ring to it (recorded by Ottema). From the same place a recording of the White Bellbird by Alexandre Renaudier made in December 2006. In the Brownsberg nature reserve it is often heard between October and March and is the most 'striking' sound. The wattle at the beak of the male moves when it sings. It prefers look-outs from high trees to sing. I only know it from its sound or from seeing a white dot far away in the top of a tree along the side of the mountain. The female is green and yellow and inconspicious. The bellbird likes to "sing" mainly in the dry season in Suriname (around March and October) as can be seen in the graph that gives the number of reports in differents months, mainly from hearing the male. The reports from July and August come allmost all from the savanna region, where it seems to sing mainly in this months (noticed by O.Ottema).
Number of reports of hearing or seeing a bellbird in different months in Suriname. The reports from July and August are mainly from the savanna region, the others come from the interior (rainforest).
Each small square indicates the observation of at least one (group) of these birds, the medium ones at least 4 observations on different days and the largest ones 10 or more. The color of each square indicates: blue for coastal area, yellow for savanna and red for rainforest.
| Distribution in Suriname (explanation) | |
| Coastal area |  |
| Savanna | |
| Forests |  |
| Mountain forests |  |
| Sipalawini savanna | |
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