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Azure-rumped Tanager | Poecilostreptus cabanisi
Azuurstuittangare | Tangara chiapaneca
The Azure-rumped Tanager is a pale blue tanager with a black-spotted back and an azure rump. It lives in pairs or small groups in the canopy of humid montane forest and shade coffee. Its small range lies entirely within the guide area, on the Pacific slope of Chiapas and Guatemala.
Voice
Calls are high, thin tsee notes and a dry chip. The song is poorly described.
Recording: Richard E. Webster — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
14–15 cm. A medium-sized tanager with a stout, dark bill. Head and upperparts pale sky blue, the crown and nape with a greenish sheen; mantle spotted black; rump bright azure. Black lores. Throat and breast pale blue to greyish blue with small black spots on the upper breast, belly dull buff to whitish. Wings and tail black with blue edges. Male and female are alike.
Confusion species
No other tanager in its range looks very similar. Blue-grey Tanager Thraupis episcopus is uniform greyish blue, without black spots or a contrasting rump. The male Elegant Euphonia Chlorophonia elegantissima is smaller, with a pale blue cap, a dark back and orange-yellow underparts. Its closest relative, Grey-and-gold Tanager Poecilostreptus palmeri, lives far away in eastern Panama.
Habitat
Canopy and edges of humid evergreen foothill and montane forest on the Pacific slope, roughly between 1000 and 1800 m; also shade coffee with tall shade trees. It lives in pairs or small groups and eats mainly fruit, including figs and Cecropia, as well as insects.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Only in the Sierra Madre de Chiapas in south-eastern Mexico, including El Triunfo, and on the Pacific slope of south-western Guatemala, including the southern flank of Atitlán volcano. Found only in the guide area. Resident.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Guatemala regularly seen in forest and coffee farms on the southern slope of Atitlán volcano; in Mexico in the reserves of the Sierra Madre de Chiapas, such as El Triunfo.
Conservation status
Vulnerable (VU). Small and fragmented range; threatened by clearance of montane forest and by the conversion of shade coffee to sun coffee and other farmland.
Scientific name
Poecilostreptus cabanisi | (Sclater, 1868)
Sclater described the species in 1868 as Calliste cabanisi; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Poecilostreptus was introduced in 2016 by Burns, Unitt & Mason. Poecilostreptus is Greek, from poikilos 'spotted, variegated' and streptos 'collar', after the band of black spots across the pale breast. cabanisi honours the German ornithologist Jean Louis Cabanis (1816–1906), curator at the Berlin natural history museum. The specimen the first description was based on came from Costa Cuca, Quetzaltenango, Guatemala.