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Blue Dacnis | Dacnis cayana
Blauwe pitpit | Dacnis azul
The Blue Dacnis is a small, active tanager with a short, pointed bill that searches tree crowns for insects, fruit and nectar. In the Caribbean it occurs only on Trinidad, where it is common and often moves with honeycreepers and other tanagers.
Voice
Fairly quiet. The calls are weak: high, thin tsit notes and a high chit or tseep. The song is a wheezy series of thin, high notes.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
11–12 cm, slim, with a short, straight, pointed bill. The male is turquoise-blue on the head, underparts, rump and scapulars, with a narrow black mask through the eye, a small black throat patch and black mantle, wings and tail; the flight feathers are edged blue. The female is mostly green, paler below, with a bluish head and a grey throat.
Confusion species
Purple Honeycreeper Cyanerpes caeruleus and Red-legged Honeycreeper Cyanerpes cyaneus have a long, curved bill; the males are violet or purplish blue, not turquoise. Male Turquoise Tanager Tangara mexicana is larger and darker blue, with a yellow belly. The female resembles a small vireo or a female euphonia, but the blue head is distinctive.
Habitat
Moist forest and its edges, second growth, shaded cacao plantations and semi-open country with trees and shrubs, also gardens. It usually forages high in the trees, in pairs or in mixed flocks, gleaning insects from leaves and taking small fruit and nectar. It also comes to feeders.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Within the Caribbean only on Trinidad, where it is common throughout the forested parts of the island; it is absent from Tobago. Outside the region from Honduras through Central America and across almost all of South America except Chile and Uruguay.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
At flowering and fruiting trees along forest edges in the Northern Range, and at fruit feeders in the Arima Valley, where males can be compared with honeycreepers. The short, straight bill is the key feature.
Conservation status
Not threatened. A widespread and fairly common species that also occurs in second growth and wooded farmland.
Scientific name
Dacnis cayana | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Motacilla cayana; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Dacnis was introduced in 1816 by Cuvier, GLCFD. Dacnis comes from the Ancient Greek daknis, an unidentified bird from Egypt. cayana refers to Cayenne in French Guiana, the type locality. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.