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Ashy-throated Chlorospingus | Chlorospingus canigularis
Grijskeeltangare | Clorospingo gorjigrís
The Ashy-throated Chlorospingus is a small Chlorospingus with a plain grey throat and a yellow-olive breast band. It lives in the foothills and lower montane forests of Costa Rica and western Panama and further in the northern Andes. Often in small groups within mixed foraging flocks.
Voice
The call is a thin, high tseet or tsip. The song is a short, thin trill or series of high notes, heard less often than the call.
Recording: Johan Chaves — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–14 cm. Crown olive-grey to olive green, cheeks grey; no white spot behind the eye. Throat plain pale grey, without speckles. Broad yellow-olive breast band; belly dull white, flanks olive-grey. Upperparts olive green. Bill dark and pointed. The sexes are alike.
Confusion species
Common Chlorospingus Chlorospingus flavopectus has a dull white, dark-speckled throat and a white spot behind the eye, and on average lives higher up. Yellow-throated Chlorospingus Chlorospingus flavigularis, in western Panama, has a yellow throat and grey underparts without a yellow breast band. Sooty-capped Chlorospingus Chlorospingus pileatus has a sooty-black head with a white stripe and lives higher in the mountains.
Habitat
Humid foothill and lower montane forest, mainly between about 600 and 1,500 metres, and its edges. It lives in the middle levels and canopy, usually in small groups that travel with mixed foraging flocks. It eats insects and small fruits.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In the guide area in Costa Rica and western Panama, mainly on the Caribbean slope and locally on the Pacific slope in southern Costa Rica and Chiriquí. Beyond that in Venezuela and in the Andes of Colombia and Ecuador to northern Peru.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Best found in foothill forest on the Caribbean slope, where small groups move through the forest high in the canopy with mixed foraging flocks; the plain grey throat is the key feature.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Fairly widespread, but in the guide area tied to a narrow elevation zone that is sensitive to deforestation.
Scientific name
Chlorospingus canigularis | (de Lafresnaye, 1848)
De Lafresnaye described the species in 1848 as Tachyphonus canigularis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Chlorospingus was introduced in 1851 by Cabanis. Chlorospingus is Greek, from khlōros 'green' and spingos 'finch', after the olive-green upperparts. canigularis is Latin, from canus 'grey' and gula 'throat', after the ashy-grey throat. The specimen the first description was based on came from Bogotá, Colombia.