All species › Passerines › Cotingas › Blue Cotinga
Blue Cotinga | Cotinga nattererii
Zwartbuikcotinga | Cotinga azul | Cotinga-azul
The Blue Cotinga is a small, turquoise-blue cotinga of north-western South America and eastern Panama. The male is glossy blue with a purple throat and a purple patch on the belly. It often perches motionless for long periods on a high, bare branch in the sun.
Voice
Largely silent. The male's wings make a whistling or rattling sound in flight.
No recording with a suitable Creative Commons licence is available for this species yet.
Identification
18 cm, with a round head, a small, dark bill and a short tail. The male is glossy turquoise blue, with a black eye-ring and lores, a deep purple throat patch and a purple patch in the centre of the belly; the wings and tail are black with blue edges. The female is dark brown, scaled above with buff fringes and buff below with dark scaling. Young males at first resemble the female.
Confusion species
Plum-throated Cotinga Cotinga maynana and Spangled Cotinga Cotinga cayana are very similar, but live east of the Andes in Amazonia and do not overlap. The male Spangled Cotinga is paler blue with black spotting and has no purple on the belly. Blue tanagers and dacnises are much smaller and slimmer.
Habitat
The canopy and edges of humid lowland and foothill forest, also semi-open country with tall, scattered trees; mostly below 1000 m. It eats mainly fruit, often in fruiting trees together with other species. The nest is a small, shallow cup high in a tree.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia in the Pacific lowlands and in the north, east to the middle Magdalena valley. In Ecuador rare in the far north-west, in Esmeraldas. Absent from Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in eastern Panama and north-western Venezuela.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the early morning in northern Colombia and the Pacific lowlands, scan the bare tops of tall trees; the male often perches there in the sun.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Locally declining through clearance of lowland forest, but it tolerates semi-open country with tall trees.
Scientific name
Cotinga nattererii | (Boissonneau, 1840)
Boissonneau described the species in 1840 as Ampelis Nattererii; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Cotinga was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. The genus name goes back, via Brisson (1760), to the Tupí name catingá, 'bright forest (bird)', for the colourful cotingas. The species name honours Johann Natterer (1787–1843), an Austrian naturalist who collected in Brazil from 1817 to 1835. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bogotá, Colombia.