All species › Passerines › Tanagers and allies › Black-headed Tanager
Black-headed Tanager | Stilpnia cyanoptera
Zwartkoptangare | Tangara cabecinegra | Saíra-de-cabeça-preta
The Black-headed Tanager is a tanager of the mountains of Venezuela and northeastern Colombia; the male has a black head on a pale, opalescent straw-yellow to silvery-green body. In the guide area it occurs only on the northern edge. It lives at forest edges and in semi-open country with trees.
Voice
The call is a sharp, high tsit or chip; the song is a series of rapid, thin chip notes.
Recording: Gustavo Luz — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
13 cm. Male: head and throat black, forming a hood; the body is pale straw yellow to opalescent silvery green, with a sheen that changes with the light. The wings and tail are black with blue to blue-green edges. Female: greenish, with a greyer-washed head without a black hood and blue-green edges to the wings and tail. The bill is black. Juveniles resemble the female.
Confusion species
Black-capped Tanager Stilpnia heinei has only a black crown, not a full hood, and a silvery blue-green, streaked throat and breast. Burnished-buff Tanager Stilpnia cayana is ochre-yellow with a black mask, but without a black hood. Scrub Tanager Stilpnia vitriolina is silvery green with a rufous crown and a black mask.
Habitat
Edges of humid montane forest, open woodland, secondary growth, scrubby slopes with scattered trees and shaded coffee plantations, mainly from about 500 to 2000 m. It eats mainly small fruits and searches branches for insects, usually in pairs or small groups, sometimes in mixed flocks.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia only in the north and northeast: in the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta, the Serranía de Perijá and locally in the north of the Eastern Andes near the border with Venezuela. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. The core of the range lies outside the guide area, in the coastal ranges and Andes of Venezuela; the birds of the tepuis of southeastern Venezuela, Guyana and northern Brazil are sometimes treated as a separate species.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Look at forest edges, in coffee plantations and in gardens with fruiting trees on the lower and middle slopes of the Sierra Nevada de Santa Marta and the Serranía de Perijá; the birds often sit in the tops of isolated trees.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Locally fairly common in Venezuela; its range within the guide area is small. It tolerates semi-open and cultivated land.
Scientific name
Stilpnia cyanoptera | (Swainson, 1834)
Swainson described the species in 1834 as A[glaia] cyanoptera; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Stilpnia was introduced in 2016 by Burns, Unitt & Mason. The genus name comes from Greek stilpnos, 'glittering' or 'glistening'. The specific name comes from Greek kuanos, 'dark blue', and pteron, 'wing', referring to the blue wings. The specimen the first description was based on came from Vicinity of Caracas, Venezuela.