Turquoise Tanager
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| Turquoise Tanager | ||||||||||||||
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| Tangara mexicana (Linnaeus, 1766) |
The Turquoise Tanager, Tangara mexicana, is a medium-sized passerine bird. This tanager is a resident breeder from Trinidad, Colombia and Venezuela south to Bolivia and much of Brazil. Besides residing in the Guianas of northern South America, it is a resident of the Amazon Basin and the adjacent Tocantins-Araguaia River drainage of northeast Brazil.
It occurs in forest, open woodland and cultivation. The bulky cup nest is built in a tree or shrub, and the female incubates three brown-blotched grey-green eggs.
Adult Turquoise Tanagers are 14cm long and weigh 20g. They are long-tailed and with a dark stout pointed bill. The adult is mainly dark blue, with a turquoise shoulder patch and yellow lower underparts.
The Trinidadian race, T. m. vieiloti, has a darker blue head and breast and more vividly yellow underparts than the mainland forms.
These are social birds usually found in groups. They eat a wide variety of fruit and also take insects, often gleaned from twigs.
The Turquoise Tanager’s song is a fast squeaky chatter tic-tic-tic-tic-tic.
[edit] References
- BirdLife International (2004). Tangara mexicana. 2006 IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. IUCN 2006. Retrieved on 12 May 2006. Database entry includes justification for why this species is of least concern
- Birds of Venezuela by Hilty, ISBN 0-7136-6418-5
- ffrench, Richard (1991). A Guide to the Birds of Trinidad and Tobago, 2nd edition, Comstock Publishing. ISBN 0-8014-9792-2.
[edit] External links
- Turquoise Tanager videos on the Internet Bird Collection
- Stamps (for Suriname) with RangeMap–(shows the disjunct range in coastal SEast Brazil)
- Turquoise Tanager photo gallery VIREO
