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Blue-grey Tanager | Thraupis episcopus
Bisschopstangare | Tangara azuleja
The Blue-grey Tanager is one of the commonest birds of Trinidad and Tobago. It lives in gardens, along roads and in plantations, often perches in the open on wires and roof edges, and readily comes to fruit. About fourteen subspecies are recognised across its large range, differing mainly in the colour of the shoulder patch.
Voice
The song is a squeaky, somewhat scratchy twitter, mixed with calls such as tseee and tsuup. Birds also call a lot when perched on wires and roofs.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
16–18 cm, with a short, stout bill. Head and underparts are pale grey-blue, the back darker blue-grey. Wings and tail are bluer, with bright blue feather edges. The shoulder shows a patch of a different shade of blue, violet-blue in the Trinidad subspecies neosophilus. Tobago birds, subspecies berlepschi, are darker and brighter blue on the rump and shoulder. The sexes are alike; juveniles are duller and greyer.
Confusion species
Palm Tanager Thraupis palmarum has the same shape, but is greyish olive-green, with black wing tips that contrast sharply with a paler, yellow-green wing panel. The male Blue Dacnis Dacnis cayana is smaller, bright turquoise-blue with a black back and throat patch. Turquoise Tanager Tangara mexicana is dark blue with a yellow belly.
Habitat
Gardens, parks, villages and towns, plantations, pasture with scattered trees, forest edges, secondary forest and coastal woodland; scarcer in closed forest than in semi-open country. It eats fruit, nectar and insects, and visits flowering trees and feeders. The nest is a deep cup high in a tree fork, sometimes in a crevice in a building. Nests are sometimes parasitised by Shiny Cowbird Molothrus bonariensis.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
Resident on Trinidad and Tobago, common on both islands. Outside the region from southern Mexico through Central America and northern South America to Bolivia and the Amazon basin of Brazil. Introduced populations live in Lima (Peru) and in Florida.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Almost any garden with fruit trees and any village street on Trinidad and Tobago will produce birds, including in Port of Spain and Scarborough. Fruit feeders attract them in numbers, and there the differences from Palm Tanager can be compared.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species benefits from forest clearance and gardens, and is commoner in secondary forest and farmland than in undisturbed forest.
Scientific name
Thraupis episcopus | (Linnaeus, 1766)
Linnaeus described the species in 1766 as Tanagra Episcopus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Thraupis was introduced in 1826 by Boie. Thraupis is the Ancient Greek word for an unidentified small bird mentioned by Aristotle. episcopus is Latin for 'bishop', a name going back to Buffon's 'L'Évêque', after the blue colour. The specimen the first description was based on came from Brazil (probably Cayenne, French Guiana).