Bulletin 394 - Colombia 2021 #11 - Tanagers Pt 1

 I finally made it back to Colombia for my second visit and again used the guide services of Pablo Florez. I went with my friend Martin Jackson. We visited Inirida on the Orinoco, Santa Marta of course, Guajira Peninsula on the Caribbean coast, and a couple of National Parks around Bogota.

Tanagers are a large New World family of mostly colorful birds. They include seedeaters, conebills, tanagers, flowerpiercers etc. Any birding trip to the tropics will find a large number of them.

The 5" Bay-headed Tanager (Tangara gyrola) is a fairly common bird from Costa Rica south into northern Amazonia. They usually have an aqua underside, but the Santa Marta range toddi subspecies is green. This is a likely future split.

Bay-headed Tanager
toddi ssp in Santa Marta range

The 7" Santa Marta Mountain Tanager (Anisognathus melanogenys) is a Santa Marta endemic and an easy ID with the blue back, yellow underside and black face.

Santa Marta Mountain Tanager

But the most exciting tanager we found in Santa Marta was the skulking 5.5" Plushcap (Catamblyrhynchus diadema). This is not an endemic to Santa Marta - but the only pair we saw and they flew across the trail and landed at eye level 8 feet away. The ID is easy if you are fortunate to see this bird.

Plushcap

Saltators are a group of tanagers that used to be in the cardinal family. The 8" Blue-grey Saltator (Saltator coerulescens) is a mostly grey bird with a white eye stripe.

Blue-grey Saltator

The 8" Olivaceous Saltator (Saltator olivascens) is similar and was split form the above species - but is a lighter grey and lacks the stripe over the eye.

Olivaceous Saltator

The 8" Orinocan Saltator (Saltator orenocensis) is dark above with a black face and rusty flanks and bright white stripe over the eye.

Orinocan Saltator

The 6" male Plumbeous Sierra Finch (Phrygilus unicolor) is a cute little bird of the paramo. The female is brown and streaky like a sparrow.

Plumbeous Sierra Finch - male

The 4.5" Grey Pileated Finch (Coryphospingus pileatus) is a rather dull greyish bird with  a pink bill.

Grey Pileated Finch

I put the different bird/mammal families in single folders for easy viewing

I have photos of 114 of the 385 species of tanagers

Happy birding and photography,

David McDonald

dkmmdpa@gmail.com

photos copyright 2006 - 2022 David McDonald

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