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Buff-throated Saltator | Saltator maximus
Bontkeelsaltator | Saltador golianteado
The Buff-throated Saltator is a large, olive-green tanager with a heavy bill, a white supercilium and a white throat with a buff lower part. It lives at forest edges and in secondary forest in the humid lowlands and sings a melodious, thrush-like song. In the guide area it occurs from south-eastern Mexico to Panama.
Voice
Song a melodious, continuous series of whistled and warbled phrases, thrush-like and often long sustained. Call a short, sharp chik or tsip.
Recording: JAYRSON ARAUJO DE OLIVEIRA — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
20–21 cm. Upperparts olive-green, head grey with a short white supercilium. Throat white above, buff to cinnamon below, bordered at the side by a broad black malar stripe. Breast and belly grey, flanks and undertail coverts buff. Bill heavy and black. Male and female alike; young birds are duller, with a yellowish or mottled throat.
Confusion species
Black-headed Saltator Saltator atriceps is larger, has a black or blackish-grey crown and side of the head, a white throat without a buff part and a loud, harsh call. Cinnamon-bellied Saltator Saltator grandis has grey upperparts. Streaked Saltator Saltator striatipectus has a streaked breast and lives in drier, open country.
Habitat
Edges of humid lowland and foothill forest, secondary forest, scrub, gallery forest, cacao and coffee plantations and gardens, mostly below 1200 m. It eats fruit, flowers, buds, leaves and insects. It lives in pairs or small groups, often in mixed flocks.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Lowlands of south-eastern Mexico (mainly southern Veracruz, northern Oaxaca, Tabasco, Chiapas and the southern Yucatán Peninsula), further through Belize, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua and Costa Rica to Panama, mainly on the Caribbean slope, in Costa Rica and Panama also on the Pacific slope. Outside the guide area in South America to Bolivia and Amazonian Brazil.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Regularly visits feeders with bananas at lowland lodges, for example on the Caribbean slope of Costa Rica. Singing birds often perch high at a forest edge.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Common and widespread; it copes well with secondary forest and plantations.
Scientific name
Saltator maximus | (Müller, 1776)
Müller described the species in 1776 as Tanagra maxima; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Saltator was introduced in 1816 by Vieillot. Saltator is Latin for 'dancer, leaper', after the birds' hopping movements. maximus is Latin for 'largest'; Müller described it as Tanagra maxima, the largest of his 'tanagers'. The specimen the first description was based on came from Cayenne, French Guiana.