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Yellow-backed Tanager | Hemithraupis flavicollis
Geelstuittangare | Tangara lomiamarilla
The Yellow-backed Tanager is a small tanager of the high canopy of humid lowland forest. The male has a black head and back with a yellow throat and a yellow rump. In the guide area it occurs only in eastern Panama; beyond that it lives in much of tropical South America.
Voice
Calls with high, thin tsee and tsit notes. The song is a high, fast series of chipping notes.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
12–13 cm. A small, fairly slender tanager with a thin bill, the lower mandible pale. Male with black head, mantle, wings and tail, a bright yellow throat and yellow lower back and rump; breast and belly whitish to grey, undertail coverts yellow. Often a small white spot on the wing. Female olive-green above, dull yellow below with a pale belly.
Confusion species
The male Black-and-yellow Tanager Chrysothlypis chrysomelas is entirely yellow below and has a yellow head. The female resembles female Black-and-yellow Tanagers and olive-green warblers and vireos, but sits higher in the canopy in mixed flocks with other tanagers.
Habitat
High canopy and edges of humid evergreen lowland forest and Chocó rainforest, mainly below 900 m; also tall secondary forest. It travels with mixed canopy flocks and 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 eastern Panama, mainly in Darién and the east of Panamá province. Beyond that from northern and western Colombia through Amazonia and the Guianas to eastern Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
In Darién look for it in mixed flocks in the high canopy; on a bird seen from below the male's yellow throat and rump are noticed first.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Scarce and local in the guide area; widespread in South America.
Scientific name
Hemithraupis flavicollis | (Vieillot, 1818)
Vieillot described the species in 1818 as Nemosia flavicollis; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Hemithraupis was introduced in 1851 by Cabanis. Hemithraupis is Greek, from hēmi- 'half, small' and the tanager genus Thraupis: a 'half' or small tanager. flavicollis is Latin, from flavus 'yellow' and collum 'neck', after the male's yellow throat. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.