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Metallic-green Tanager | Tangara labradorides
Zwartnektangare | Tangara verdiplata | Saíra-verde-metálica
The Metallic-green Tanager is a tanager of the subtropical zone of the northern Andes, with a silvery blue-green plumage that changes colour with the light. It lives in pairs or small groups and almost always joins mixed tanager flocks in the canopy. Its Dutch name refers to the black stripe over the crown and hindneck.
Voice
High, thin tsit calls, often in quick series as a flock moves on. The song is inconspicuous.
Recording: Nunes-de-Almeida — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
13 cm. The plumage is mostly glossy silvery blue-green, more greenish blue on the head and breast and paler towards the belly. The lores and forehead are black, and a black stripe runs along the centre of the crown to the hindneck. The wings and tail are black with blue-green edges; the lesser coverts are blue. The centre of the belly is whitish, the undertail coverts are buff. The bill is black. The sexes are alike; juveniles are duller and greyer.
Confusion species
Blue-browed Tanager Tangara cyanotis has a black head and back with a pale blue eyebrow. Beryl-spangled Tanager Tangara nigroviridis is black with blue-green spangles and a black mask. Blue-necked Tanager Stilpnia cyanicollis has a blue head and a black body. Glistening-green Tanager Chlorochrysa phoenicotis of the western slope is brighter green with a grey ear patch and no black on the crown.
Habitat
Canopy and edges of humid montane forest and cloud forest, also secondary forest, roadside forest edges and isolated trees in open country, roughly between 1200 and 2400 m. It takes small fruits and berries and searches thin twigs and the undersides of leaves for insects. It builds a cup nest 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 all three Andean cordilleras; in Ecuador on both slopes of the Andes; in Peru in the north, on the western slope in the far north-west and on the eastern slope south to about the centre of the country. Absent from Bolivia and the Galápagos. Does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
With mixed tanager flocks along forest edges and roads in the subtropical zone, as in the montane forests of western Ecuador and the Colombian cordilleras. At fruit feeders at lodges it sometimes comes close.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Fairly common in forested areas and also present in forest remnants and secondary forest, but locally affected by deforestation.
Scientific name
Tangara labradorides | (Boissonneau, 1840)
Boissonneau described the species in 1840 as Tanagra (Aglaia) labradorides; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Tangara was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. The genus name comes from the extinct Tupi language, in which tangara means 'dancer'. The specific name comes from labradorite, an iridescent mineral, and Greek -oidēs, 'resembling', referring to the metallic sheen of the plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bogotá, Colombia.