All species › Passerines › Tanagers and allies › Gold-ringed Tanager
Gold-ringed Tanager | Bangsia aureocincta
Goudringtangare | Tangara de Tatamá | Sanhaço-de-anel-dourado
The Gold-ringed Tanager is a stocky tanager with a very small range in the wet, mossy cloud forest of the Western Andes of Colombia. A golden-yellow ring around the black cheeks and a green back separate it from related species. It lives in pairs and small groups in the middle storey and the canopy, often with mixed flocks.
Voice
A rapid series of high, thin and somewhat buzzy notes, and short, sharp calls; poorly described.
Recording: Julián Andrés Zuleta Marín — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
16 cm, with a short, stout black bill and a short tail. The head is black, with a narrow golden-yellow ring running from above the eye along the rear edge of the cheek to the sides of the throat. Back, wings and tail are green, the shoulders bluish. A yellow patch lies in the centre of the breast; belly and flanks are olive green. The iris is dark. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Black-and-gold Tanager Bangsia melanochlamys lives in the same region, but is black above, without a yellow ring around the cheeks, and has a larger yellow centre to the breast and belly. Moss-backed Tanager Bangsia edwardsi lives lower and has a blue crown and cheeks. Black-chinned Mountain Tanager Anisognathus notabilis is larger, with a yellow crown stripe and entirely yellow underparts.
Habitat
Very wet, heavily mossy cloud forest and upper montane forest on the Pacific slope, roughly between 1300 and 2200 m. It eats fruit and berries and searches mossy branches for insects, in the middle storey and the canopy. Little is known about the nest.
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 Western Andes, in Chocó, Risaralda and northern Valle del Cauca, centred on the Tatamá massif. Absent from Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and the Galápagos. Does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Search along the road to Montezuma near Tatamá National Park (Risaralda), in mossy cloud forest above about 1500 m; the birds move with mixed flocks in the canopy.
Conservation status
Vulnerable. The range is very small and forest along its lower edges is being cleared; the higher part lies largely within protected areas.
Scientific name
Bangsia aureocincta | (Hellmayr, 1910)
Hellmayr described the species in 1910 as Buthraupis aureocincta; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Bangsia was introduced in 1919 by Penard. The genus name honours Outram Bangs (1863–1932), an American zoologist and from 1900 curator of mammals at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology. The species name comes from Latin aureus, 'golden', and cinctus, 'girdled', referring to the golden ring around the head. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cerro Tatamá, Chocó, Colombia.