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Bay-headed Tanager | Tangara gyrola
Okerkaptangare | Tangara cabecibaya
The Bay-headed Tanager is a small green tanager with a rufous head that lives in the canopy of foothill and montane forest. In the guide area the form bangsi has entirely green underparts, unlike most South American forms, which are blue below. It occurs in Costa Rica and Panama.
Voice
The calls are thin, high and somewhat buzzy tseet notes. The song is a slow series of high, sibilant notes.
Recording: Juan Freile — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · shortened to the first 60 s, mono · xeno-canto
Identification
13–14 cm. Head uniformly rufous, separated from the green back by a narrow golden-yellow line across the hindneck. Body, wings and tail grass-green; in the guide area the underparts are also green, slightly paler on the belly. Shoulder with a golden sheen. Bill short and black. Female and young birds duller, with a paler, less rufous head.
Confusion species
Rufous-winged Tanager Tangara lavinia has a similar rufous head, but rufous wings and a broader yellow band across the upper back; it lives mainly lower, in lowland forest. Other green tanagers in the guide area, such as Emerald Tanager Tangara florida, lack the rufous head.
Habitat
Canopy and edges of humid foothill and montane forest, mature secondary forest, clearings with tall trees and gardens with fruiting trees, roughly between 600 and 2000 m, locally lower. It forages in pairs or small groups, often with mixed flocks. It eats fruit and insects, which it searches for along branches.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Foothills and mountains of Costa Rica on both slopes, mainly on the Caribbean slope and the southern Pacific slope, and of Panama east to Darién. Outside the guide area widespread in South America, from Colombia and Venezuela to Bolivia, Amazonia, the Guianas and Trinidad.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Regularly seen at Rancho Naturalista and in Tapantí in Costa Rica and on Cerro Azul and at El Valle de Antón in Panama, often in fruiting trees at forest edges.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Fairly common in foothill and montane forest; also occurs in semi-open country with trees.
Scientific name
Tangara gyrola | (Linnaeus, 1758)
Linnaeus described the species in 1758 as Fringilla Gyrola; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Tangara was introduced in 1760 by Brisson. Tangara is a Tupi name from Brazil, often explained as 'dancer', for a brightly coloured bird. gyrola is a diminutive of Latin gyrus 'ring, circle', possibly after the golden collar of some forms. The specimen the first description was based on came from Suriname.