Bay-headed Tanager - BirdForum Opus

Subsepcies toddi
Photo by Robert Scanlon
Photographed in Colombia, May 2004

Tangara gyrola

Identification

Juvenile, subspecies bangsi
Photo by 49bentley
Puerto Viejo de Sarapiqui, Costa Rica, January 2018

12 cm (4¾ in)

• Plumage varies widely between the subspecies.
• Chestnut head
• Bright green upperparts
• Green or pale blue underparts
• Sometimes with yellowish nuchal collar

Distribution

Costa Rica, Panama, Ecuador, Bolivia, southern Brazil, north east Venezuela and Trinidad.

Taxonomy

Subspecies

Subspecies bangsi
Photo by Jim Crosswell
Finca Oro, Costa Rica, February 2007

Subspecies deleticia
Photo by olivewarbler
Dapa, Valle, Colombia, June 2008

There are 9 subspecies^[1]:

• T. g. bangsi:

• Humid tropical and subtropical Costa Rica and western Panama (In central Panama, birds seem intermediate between this and deleticia)

• T. g. deleticia: Green between the red and blue in the throat and upper chest

• Eastern Panama (Darién) and western Colombia

• T. g. nupera:

• Extreme south-western Colombia (Nariño) and western Ecuador

• T. g. toddi:

• Mountains of northern Colombia (Santa Marta and Perijá) and north-western Venezuela (Andes) to Trinidad

• T. g. viridissima:

• Coastal north-eastern Venezuela; winters in Trinidad

• T. g. catharinae:

• Eastern base of Eastern Andes of Colombia to central Bolivia

• T. g. parva:

• South-eastern Colombia to southern Venezuela, north-eastern Peru and north-western Brazil

• T. g. gyrola: Green, blue belly, thin gold collar on the hind neck. Sexes are similar, but immatures are duller with chestnut-flecked green heads.

• Southern Venezuela to the Guianas and extreme northern Brazil

• T. g. albertinae:

• Brazil south of the Amazon (Rio Purús to Pará, northern Mato Grosso)

Habitat

Gardens, highland river borders, forest edge, humid forests; observed at heights between 900-1300 m.

Behaviour

Diet

Subspecies viridissima
Photo by nigel lallsingh
Morne bleu, Blanchisseuse, Trinidad, September 2009

Their diet consists of fruit and insects.

Breeding

They build a bulky cup nest in a tree. The 2 brown-blotched white eggs are incubated by the female for 13-14 days. The young fledge about 15-16 days later.

Vocalisation

Song is a slow seee, seee, seee, tsou, tsooy.
Call: in the West Andes of Colombia is a raspy beeww, which is very similar to the call of Red-eyed Vireo.
A call given when moving is a rapid tst-tst-tst.

Gallery

Click on photo for larger image

• 

  Female, subspecies catharinae
  Photo by Stanley Jones
  Reserva Natural Maycu, Ecuador, November 2014

• 

  Subspecies parva
  Photo by Luis R
  Moyobamba, San Martin, Peru, March 2018

References

1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, D. Roberson, T. A. Fredericks, B. L. Sullivan, and C. L. Wood. 2017. The eBird/Clements checklist of birds of the world: v2017, with updates to August 2017. Downloaded from http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/download/
2. Wikipedia
3. Handbook of the Birds of the World Alive (retrieved May 2015)
4. Mireles, C. and K. J. Burns (2020). Bay-headed Tanager (Tangara gyrola), version 1.0. In Birds of the World (T. S. Schulenberg, Editor). Cornell Lab of Ornithology, Ithaca, NY, USA. https://doi.org/10.2173/bow.bahtan1.01
5. Birdforum Member observations

• List of references

Recommended Citation

• BirdForum Opus contributors. (2025) Bay-headed Tanager. In: BirdForum, the forum for wild birds and birding. Retrieved 13 May 2025 from https://www.birdforum.net/opus/Bay-headed_Tanager

External Links

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