#thraupis

Blue-gray Tanager (Thraupis episcopus), family Thraupidae, order Passeriformes, found in Mexico, Central America, and South America

Shades of Sage🍃✨️

Palm Tanager - Thraupis palmarum

PASSERIFORMES / Thraupidae / Thraupis

Description 🪶

Adult palm tanagers are 19 cm (7.5 in) long and weigh 36 g (1.3 oz). They are grey to dull olive-green. The flight feathers are blackish, and the long tail is blackish edged with green. A yellow wingbar shows in flight. Sexes are similar, although females may be somewhat paler.

Range and Habitat 🗺

It occurs in semi-open areas including cultivation and gardens. The bulky cup nest is built in a tree, usually a palm, or under the eaves of a house, and the female incubates three, sometimes two, brown-blotched cream eggs for 14 days, with another 17 days to fledging.

Behavior 🐦

Blue-gray Tanager (Thraupis episcopus), family Thraupidae, order Passeriformes, Costa Rica

Blue-gray Tanager (Thraupis episcopus), family Thraupidae, order Passeriformes, Peru

The blue-gray tanager has been one of my favorite childhood birds, and throughout my life; this bird is widespread and common throughout its large range, the blue-gray tanager is evaluated as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List of Threatened Species.

It's scientific name is: Thraupis episcopus

PASSERIFORMES / Thraupidae / Thraupis

The blue-gray tanager (Thraupis episcopus) is a medium-sized South American songbird of the tanager family, Thraupidae. Its range is from Mexico south to northeast Bolivia and northern Brazil, all of the Amazon Basin, except the very south. It has been introduced to Lima (Peru). On Trinidad and Tobago, this bird is called blue jean.

Description 🌿 💙:

The blue-gray tanager is 16–18 cm (6.3–7.1 in) long and weighs 30–40 g (1.1–1.4 oz). Adults have a light bluish head and underparts, with darker blue upperparts and a shoulder patch colored a different hue of blue. The bill is short and quite thick. Sexes are similar, but the immature is much duller in plumage.

The song is a squeaky twittering, interspersed with tseee and tsuup call notes.

Distribution and Breeding 🗺:

The breeding habitat is open woodland, cultivated areas and gardens. The blue-gray tanager lives mainly on fruit, but will also take some nectar, insects and other arthropods. This is a common, restless, noisy and confiding species, usually found in pairs, but sometimes small groups. It thrives around human habitation, and will take some cultivated fruit like papayas (Carica papaya).

One to three, usually two, dark-marked whitish to gray-green eggs are laid in a deep cup nest in a high tree fork or building crevice. Incubation by the female is 14 days with another 17 to fledging. The nest is sometimes parasitised by Molothrus cowbirds.