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Flame-rumped Tanager | Ramphocelus flammigerus
Vuurrugtangare | Tangara lomiflama
The Flame-rumped Tanager is a velvety black tanager with a brightly coloured rump. In the guide area the form icteronotus lives, whose rump is lemon-yellow instead of flame-red; it was formerly treated as a separate species. Small groups are common in open and semi-open country in Panama.
Voice
The call is a sharp chek. The song consists of short, whistled phrases such as chweet, often repeated at dawn.
Recording: Johan Chaves — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
18–19 cm. A medium-sized tanager with a thick, pale blue to silvery-white bill with a black tip. The male is velvety black with a bright lemon-yellow lower back and rump. The female has dark greyish-brown upperparts, a yellow rump and entirely yellow underparts with a brownish throat and sides of the breast.
Confusion species
The male Scarlet-rumped Tanager Ramphocelus passerinii has a scarlet rump; in western Panama intermediates with an orange rump occur. The female Scarlet-rumped Tanager has a grey head and an orange-brown breast. The female Sulphur-rumped Tanager Heterospingus rubrifrons also has a yellow rump, but is grey with a white patch on the side of the breast.
Habitat
Forest edges, scrub, clearings, pastures with hedgerows, gardens and plantations, from sea level to about 1500 m, mainly in the foothills. It lives in small groups that search for fruit and insects in low vegetation.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
In the guide area only in Panama: on the Caribbean slope along almost its entire length and on the Pacific slope from the centre eastwards. Outside the guide area in western Colombia and western Ecuador, and with the red-rumped form in the Andes of Colombia.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Common in gardens and along roads in the foothills of central Panama, for example around El Valle de Antón and along Pipeline Road near Gamboa.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Common and benefits from open country and forest edges.
Scientific name
Ramphocelus flammigerus | (Jardine & Selby, 1833)
Jardine & Selby described the species in 1833 as Ramphopis flammigerus; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Ramphocelus was introduced in 1805 by Desmarest, A-G. Ramphocelus is Greek, from rhamphos 'bill' and koilos 'hollow, concave', after the conspicuous silvery lower mandible. flammigerus is Latin, from flamma 'flame' and -ger 'bearing', after the flame-red to orange rump. The specimen the first description was based on came from Antioquia, Colombia.