All species › Passerines › Tanagers and allies › Slaty Flowerpiercer
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Slaty Flowerpiercer | Diglossa plumbea
Leigrijze berghoningkruiper | Pinchaflor plomizo
The Slaty Flowerpiercer is a small, grey tanager of the high mountains of Costa Rica and western Panama. With its upturned, hooked bill it pierces flowers at the base to drink nectar. It occurs only in the guide area.
Voice
Song a high, rapid and jumbled twitter of fine, chipping notes. Call a sharp, high tsit or chip.
Recording: MiriamEaglemon — CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
10–11 cm. Male uniformly slate-grey to bluish-grey, slightly paler on the belly; wings and tail darker. Bill black, with an upturned lower mandible and a hooked tip to the upper mandible. The female is olive-brown above, dull olive-grey to yellowish-brown below with faint streaks on the breast. Young birds resemble the female but are more streaked.
Confusion species
Slaty Finch Haplospiza rustica and Peg-billed Finch Acanthidops bairdi are also slate-grey, but larger and have a straight, conical or pointed bill without a hook. The female resembles female warblers, but the bill shape and the habit of piercing flowers are distinctive. Cinnamon-bellied Flowerpiercer Diglossa baritula does not occur in Costa Rica and Panama.
Habitat
Edges and clearings of montane rainforest and oak forest, scrub and páramo above the timberline, and flowery gardens, shrubby pastures and roadsides in the mountains, mostly between 1500 and 3300 m. It visits flowering shrubs and eats small insects as well as nectar. It sometimes defends flowering shrubs against other flowerpiercers.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Mountains of Costa Rica, from the Cordillera de Tilarán and the Cordillera Central to the Cordillera de Talamanca, and western Panama in Chiriquí, east to about Veraguas. It does not occur outside the guide area.
- Resident
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Common in gardens and at lodges in the Savegre valley and at Cerro de la Muerte in Costa Rica and around Boquete and Cerro Punta in Panama. It often sits in flowering shrubs next to hummingbirds.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Common in the higher mountains; it adapts to gardens and flowery scrub.
Scientific name
Diglossa plumbea | Cabanis, 1861
Cabanis described the species in 1861 and placed it straight away in the genus where it still stands. The genus Diglossa was introduced in 1832 by Wagler. Diglossa is Greek, from diglōssos 'double-tongued' (di- 'double', glōssa 'tongue'), after the split tongue of these nectar-feeders. plumbea is Latin for 'leaden', after the male's slate-grey plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from Costa Rica.