Belize Bird of the Week #10 – Blue-grey Tanager (Thraupis episcopus)

Tanagers are new world birds that are found mainly in the tropics. The 240 or so species of tanager are medium sized birds and many of them are quite colorful. Tanagers are in the family Thraupidae, which is in the midst of reorganization as scientists learn more about their genetics. In North America, the scarlet tanager is the most common, but the scarlet tanager is now thought to belong to the cardinal family.

The blue-grey tanager is fairly common throughout its large range from southern Mexico, through Central America and into the northern part of South America. They eat fruit, insects, and nectar. You can see it eating the cercropia fruit in one of the photos below. Blue-grey tanagers are friendly and confiding. Like the great kiskadee I wrote about a few weeks ago, blue-grey tanagers often live around human habitation.

All of the photos in the collage below are of one bird as it was hopping around in a Cercropia tree near our cabana. It is a very pretty bird with the blue above and grey below, but the large cercropia leaves shaded the splendor of the blue. I am anxious to get back to Belize to photograph it in more flattering light.