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Red-crowned Ant Tanager | Habia rubica
Rode miertangare | Tángara hormiguera corona roja
The Red-crowned Ant Tanager is a dark red cardinal of the understorey of tropical forest, ranging from Mexico to northern Argentina. In the Caribbean it occurs only on Trinidad. Pairs and family groups move noisily through the lower forest storeys and regularly follow army ant swarms to catch the insects they flush.
Voice
A noisy species. The call is a rasping, scolding chak and a dry rattle, often followed by a series of clear whistles, roughly pee-pee-pee. The song consists of short, musical whistled phrases and is heard mainly in early morning.
Recording: Marcos E. Sosa — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
17–19 cm, with a fairly long tail and a stout dark bill. The male is dull reddish brown, brighter red on throat and breast, with a scarlet crown stripe narrowly bordered black on each side; the crown stripe is raised when excited. The female is olive-brown with an ochre-yellow throat and a tawny crown stripe. Juveniles are plainer and browner, without a clear crown stripe.
Confusion species
Female White-lined Tanager Tachyphonus rufus is uniformly rufous without a crown stripe and lives more at forest edges and in gardens. Hepatic Tanager Piranga flava keeps to the canopy in the mountains and has grey cheeks and no crown stripe. Male Silver-beaked Tanager Ramphocelus carbo is darker velvety red with a silvery-white lower mandible. Summer Tanager Piranga rubra, a winter visitor to Trinidad, has a pale bill and lacks the crown stripe.
Habitat
The lower and middle storeys of moist forest, lowland rainforest and montane forest up to about 900 m, also old secondary forest and shaded cocoa plantations adjoining forest. It searches for arthropods among leaves and twigs and also eats berries; it follows army ants and sometimes joins mixed foraging flocks.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
On Trinidad a fairly common resident in the forests of the Northern Range and the Central Range area; absent from Tobago and the rest of the Caribbean. Outside the region from Mexico through Central America to Colombia, Venezuela and the Guianas, and in eastern South America to Paraguay and northern Argentina.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In the forests of the Northern Range, for example along trails in the Arima Valley, the species is best found by its rasping call. A swarm of army ants on the forest floor is a good place to wait, as the birds often feed low and close by.
Conservation status
Not threatened. The species has a very large range but is sensitive to deforestation and disappears from heavily fragmented forest.
Scientific name
Habia rubica | (Vieillot, 1817)
Vieillot described the species in 1817 as Staltator rubicus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Habia was introduced in 1840 by Blyth. Habia is a word in the Guaraní language of Paraguay for various finches and tanagers. rubica comes from the Medieval Latin rubicus 'reddish'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Paraguay.