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Snowy Cotinga | Carpodectes nitidus
Sneeuwcotinga | Cotinga níveo
The Snowy Cotinga is a white cotinga of the canopy of humid lowland forest on the Caribbean side of Central America. The male can be seen from afar as a white dot on a bare treetop. The species lives only from Honduras to western Panama and is therefore endemic to the guide area.
Voice
Usually silent; sometimes a soft, short tchk or a squeaky note.
Recording: Brendan Sloan — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
19–21 cm. The male is white with a faint bluish-grey wash on crown and back, a short dark grey bill and a dark eye. The female is grey on head and back and whitish below, with dark grey wings with white edges to the coverts and tertials, and a dark bill. Round-headed and short-tailed, with an undulating, dove-like flight.
Confusion species
Yellow-billed Cotinga Carpodectes antoniae has a yellow bill and lives on the Pacific side; Black-tipped Cotinga Carpodectes hopkei is larger and lives only in eastern Panama. Tityras, such as Masked Tityra Tityra semifasciata, are greyish white with black wings and tail and have red bare skin around the eye and bill base.
Habitat
Canopy and edges of humid evergreen lowland forest, mostly below 500 m and locally higher, also swamp forest, tall secondary forest and semi-open country with scattered tall trees. It eats mainly fruit. It often sits on bare branches above the canopy. Outside the breeding season birds wander locally in search of fruiting trees.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Caribbean lowlands of eastern Honduras and Nicaragua, through Costa Rica to western Panama (Bocas del Toro). Does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Regularly seen at Tortuguero and in the Sarapiquí lowlands in Costa Rica. Scanning the highest bare treetops from a boat or a clearing pays off.
Conservation status
Not threatened, but rather scarce and local; declines where lowland forest on the Caribbean side disappears.
Scientific name
Carpodectes nitidus | Salvin, 1865
Salvin described the species in 1865 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. He introduced the genus Carpodectes in that same work. Carpodectes is Greek, from karpos 'fruit' and dēktēs 'biter': 'fruit-biter', after the fruit diet. nitidus is Latin for 'shining, gleaming', after the male's snow-white plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Tucurrique, Costa Rica.