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Speckled Tanager | Ixothraupis guttata
Spikkeltangare | Tangara moteada
The Speckled Tanager is a small green tanager with a yellow face and densely black-spotted plumage. On Trinidad it is a bird of montane forest that usually travels in pairs or small groups with mixed flocks of tanagers and honeycreepers. It was formerly placed in the genus Tangara.
Voice
The flight call is a weak, metallic tsip; soft, high chirping notes are also given.
Recording: Mauricio Cuéllar-Ramírez — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12–13 cm, with a short, pointed bill. The upperparts are green with black spots, the face yellow, with a black line from the eye to the base of the bill. The underparts are white, densely spotted black on the throat, breast and flanks, the flanks washed greenish yellow. Wings and tail are black with green edges, bluish on the wing coverts. The sexes are alike. The Trinidad subspecies, trinitatis, has more and brighter yellow on the head and heavier black spotting than mainland birds.
Confusion species
Bay-headed Tanager Tangara gyrola is also green, but has a reddish-brown head and no spots. Female honeycreepers, such as Green Honeycreeper Chlorophanes spiza, are unspotted and have a thinner, curved bill. No other green, spotted tanagers occur in the region.
Habitat
Humid montane forest, cloud forest and mature secondary forest with low trees and a dense understorey, also forest edges and shaded cocoa plantations on the slopes. It feeds mainly on fruit and also on insects, picked from twigs and leaves. The nest is a small cup in a tree.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation types of the Caribbean.
Range and movements
In the Caribbean only on Trinidad, where it is rather scarce in the higher parts of the Northern Range; it is absent from Tobago. A single report from Martinique is unconfirmed. Outside the region from Costa Rica and Panama through northern South America to northern Brazil and along the Andes to Peru.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Mixed tanager flocks at fruiting trees along the Blanchisseuse road and other higher forest roads in the Northern Range are worth checking. The birds often sit high in the canopy, and a group sometimes stays in the same tree for a while.
Conservation status
Not threatened. A widespread species; on Trinidad it is tied to montane forest, which has largely been preserved in the Northern Range.
Scientific name
Ixothraupis guttata | (Cabanis, 1851)
Cabanis described the species in 1851 as C[allispiza] guttata; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Ixothraupis was introduced in 1851 by Bonaparte. Ixothraupis combines Greek ixos 'mistletoe' with thraupis, an unidentified small bird. guttata is Latin for 'spotted', after the black spots on the head and breast. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cerro Roraima, Bolívar, Venezuela.