Vorstman's Guideto the birds of Mexico and Central America

All species › Passerines › Tanagers and allies

Tanagers and allies | Thraupidae

Tangaren | Tángaras

One of the largest bird families in the world, with sixty-three species in thirty genera in this guide, from dry scrub and grassland to rainforest, cloud forest and gardens, with the greatest richness in the humid forests of Costa Rica and Panama. The family has been established in its current form only through DNA studies and includes birds of very different appearance. The typical tanagers, such as the species of Tangara, are small to medium-sized birds with a short, stout bill and often brilliantly colourful plumage; they eat mainly fruit and insects and travel through the canopy in mixed flocks. Also included are the honeycreepers and dacnises, with thin, curved bills and glossy blue or green plumage, which take nectar, fruit and insects; the flowerpiercers, whose hook-tipped bill slits the corolla to steal nectar; the Bananaquit; the seedeaters and the saltators with their thick seed-cracking bills; and the Cocos Finch of Isla del Coco, a close relative of Darwin's finches. Song is usually simple, but clear and melodious in the saltators. The nest is generally an open cup in a tree or shrub, usually with two eggs; the Bananaquit builds a domed nest and the Swallow Tanager breeds in a burrow in a bank.

Native species 63 species

Species that occur here by nature: breeding birds, winter visitors and passage migrants. They are arranged by genus, in the sequence of the list.

Tersina 1 species

Cyanerpes 3 species

Dacnis 3 species

Chlorophanes 1 species

Heterospingus 2 species

Chrysothlypis 1 species

Hemithraupis 1 species

Volatinia 1 species

Eucometis 1 species

Loriotus 1 species

Lanio 2 species

Tachyphonus 2 species

Ramphocelus 4 species

Conirostrum 1 species

Sicalis 2 species

Haplospiza 1 species

Acanthidops 1 species

Diglossa 2 species

Saltator 6 species

Emberizoides 1 species

Sporophila 8 species

Coereba 1 species

Tiaris 1 species

Pinaroloxias 1 species

Bangsia 1 species

Tangara 7 species

Thraupis 3 species

Ixothraupis 1 species

Poecilostreptus 2 species

Stilpnia 1 species