All species › Passerines › Tanagers and allies › Spotted Tanager
Spotted Tanager | Ixothraupis punctata
Druppeltangare | Tangara puntosa | Saíra-negaça
The Spotted Tanager is a small green tanager with black teardrop spots on white underparts, in the guide area mainly a bird of the foothills and lower montane forests of the eastern slope of the Andes. It also occurs in the Guianas and northeastern Amazonia. It forages in the canopy with mixed flocks.
Voice
The call is a high, thin tsip, often repeated. The song is inconspicuous.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
12 cm. The upperparts are green with small black spots on the crown, back and scapulars. The face is green to yellow-green with a small dark loral spot, without the bright yellow forehead of Speckled Tanager. The wings and tail are black with green edges. The throat and breast are whitish with small black teardrop spots; the flanks are green and the centre of the belly white to yellowish white. The bill is black. The sexes are alike; juveniles are duller.
Confusion species
Speckled Tanager Ixothraupis guttata is slightly larger, with a yellow forehead and yellow around the eye; it lives mainly in Colombia. Yellow-bellied Tanager Ixothraupis xanthogastra has a green, spotted breast and a yellow belly centre and lives mainly lower, in the Amazonian lowlands. Dotted Tanager Ixothraupis varia is smaller and almost plain green with fine dots.
Habitat
Canopy and edges of humid foothill and lower montane forest on the eastern slope of the Andes, also tall secondary growth, mainly from about 500 to 1700 m. It eats small fruits and searches branches and leaves for insects, usually in pairs or small groups in mixed flocks with other tanagers.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of the Andes and the west coast.
Range and movements
In Colombia at most very locally in the far south. In Ecuador and Peru along the eastern slope of the Andes. In Bolivia along the eastern slope south to about Cochabamba. Absent from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in southeastern Venezuela, the Guianas and northern Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Look in mixed flocks along roads through foothill forest on the eastern slope, for example in the Manu region of Peru or along the Loreto road to Coca in Ecuador; trees with ripe fruit attract small groups.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Widespread and locally fairly common; it tolerates forest edges, but is locally affected by deforestation.
Scientific name
Ixothraupis punctata | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Tanagra punctata; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Ixothraupis was introduced in 1851 by Bonaparte. The genus name combines Greek ixos, 'mistletoe', with thraupis, an unidentified small bird. The species name comes from Latin punctatus, 'dotted'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Suriname.