All species › Passerines › Tanagers and allies › Golden-chested Tanager
Golden-chested Tanager | Bangsia rothschildi
Goudborsttangare | Tangara pechidorada | Sanhaço-de-peito-dourado
The Golden-chested Tanager is a stocky, blue-black tanager of wet lowland and foothill forest in the Chocó. A golden-yellow breast patch and yellow undertail coverts contrast with the dark body. It often perches high on bare or mossy branches and joins mixed flocks in the canopy.
Voice
A series of high, thin, somewhat buzzy notes, often repeated for long periods from a high perch, and short tsit calls.
Recording: Olaf Jahn — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
16 cm, with a short, stout bill and a short tail. The plumage is mostly deep blue-black, darker on the head and back, slightly bluer on the shoulders. A golden-yellow patch lies in the centre of the breast; the undertail coverts are also yellow. The iris is dark. The sexes are alike. Juveniles are duller and greyer, with a less sharply defined breast patch.
Confusion species
Moss-backed Tanager Bangsia edwardsi has a moss-green back and a blue head and usually lives a little higher. Black-and-gold Tanager Bangsia melanochlamys lives higher in the Andes and has a larger yellow centre to the breast and belly, without yellow undertail. Blue-and-gold Tanager Bangsia arcaei of Panama has entirely yellow underparts and a red iris.
Habitat
Wet lowland and foothill forest and the lowest montane forest on the Pacific side, also old secondary growth and forest edges, roughly from 100 to 1100 m. It eats mainly fruit and berries and also takes insects, mostly 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 in the Pacific lowlands and the lower slopes of the Western Andes, from Chocó south to Nariño. In Ecuador in the north-west, in Esmeraldas, Carchi, Imbabura and north-western Pichincha. Absent from 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 roads and forest edges in the wet foothill forest of north-western Ecuador, for example around Mashpi and in Esmeraldas, and in Colombia along the lower roads to the Pacific coast; look for a dark tanager singing high on a bare branch.
Conservation status
Least Concern. The range is limited to the Chocó, where lowland forest is being cleared on a large scale; the species tolerates some disturbance at the forest edge.
Scientific name
Bangsia rothschildi | (Berlepsch, 1897)
Berlepsch described the species in 1897 as Buthraupis rothschildi; 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 honours Walter Rothschild (1868–1937), a British banker and zoologist who founded the natural history museum at Tring. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cachaví, Esmeraldas, Ecuador.