All species › Passerines › Tanagers and allies › Yellow-bellied Tanager
Yellow-bellied Tanager | Ixothraupis xanthogastra
Geelbuiktangare | Tangara ventriamarilla | Saíra-de-barriga-amarela
The Yellow-bellied Tanager is a small green tanager of western Amazonia, densely black-spotted on the head, back and breast, with a yellow centre to the belly. It lives in the canopy of lowland and foothill forest and travels with mixed flocks.
Voice
The call is a high, soft tsit, often in short series. The song is inconspicuous.
Recording: rudy gelis — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · xeno-canto
Identification
12 cm. The upperparts are bright green with black spots on the crown, nape and back. The face is green without yellow around the eye. The wings and tail are black with green to blue-green edges. The throat and breast are green with black spots or scales; the centre of the belly is bright yellow and the undertail coverts are yellowish. The bill is black. The sexes are alike; juveniles are duller with less distinct spots.
Confusion species
Dotted Tanager Ixothraupis varia is even smaller, with finer dots and no yellow on the belly. Spotted Tanager Ixothraupis punctata has a white, black-spotted belly and lives mainly higher, in the foothills and lower montane forest. Green-and-gold Tanager Tangara schrankii has a black mask and a yellow centre to the breast, without spots.
Habitat
Canopy and edges of humid lowland forest on terra firme and in várzea, white-sand forest and foothill forest on the eastern slope of the Andes, also tall secondary growth, from the lowlands to about 1300 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 east of the Andes in Amazonia and the foothills. In Ecuador and Peru in the lowlands and foothills east of the Andes. In Bolivia in the north, along the base of the Andes south to about Cochabamba. Absent from the Galápagos. Outside the guide area in southern Venezuela and western and northern Amazonian Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
From canopy towers and walkways at lodges in Amazonian Ecuador and Peru, where mixed flocks pass at eye level, and at roadside forest edges in the foothills.
Conservation status
Least Concern. Widespread in large tracts of forest; locally declining due to deforestation.
Scientific name
Ixothraupis xanthogastra | (Sclater, 1851)
Sclater described the species in 1851 as Calliste xanthogastra; 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 Greek xanthos, 'yellow', and gastēr, 'belly'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Rio Negro (suggested: Rio Negro, Peru).