Blue-gray Tanager
Thraupis episcopus
Common and widespread powder blue-gray bird of open and semi-open areas with larger trees and hedges, towns, villages, and gardens in tropical and subtropical regions. Mainly feeds at mid-upper levels in trees, eating fruit, and perches readily on phone wires. Rather plain but distinctive appearance, with beady dark eye and fairly stout bill. Populations east of the Andes in South America have broad white wing-bars and look very different.
Identification
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.<p>The song is a squeaky twittering, interspersed with tseee and tsuup call notes.
Taxonomy
In 1760 the French zoologist Mathurin Jacques Brisson included a description of the blue-grey tanager in his Ornithologie based on a specimen collected in Brazil. He used the French name L'evesqueand the Latin name Episcopus avis. Although Brisson coined Latin names, these do not conform to the binomial system and are not recognised by the International Commission on Zoological Nomenclature. When in 1766 the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus updated his Systema Naturae for the twelfth edition he added 240 species that had been previously described by Brisson in his Ornithologie. One of these was the fulvous-crested tanager. Linnaeus included a terse description, coined the binomial name Tanagra episcopus and cited Brisson's work. The specific name episcopus is Latin for "bishop". The current genus Thraupis was introduced by the German naturalist Friedrich Boie in 1826.<p>There are 14 recognized subspecies, differing according to the exact hue of blue of the shoulder patch versus the rest of the plumage; they may be greyish, greenish or purplish-blue, with a lavender, dark blue or whitish shoulder patch. For example, T. e. berlepschi (endemic to Tobago) is a brighter and darker blue on the rump and shoulder, T. e. neosophilus with a violet shoulder patch occurs in northern Venezuela, Trinidad, eastern Colombia and the far north of Brazil, T. e. mediana of the southern Amazon basin has a white wing patch, and T. e. cana in the northern Amazon has blue shoulders.
- Scientific name
- Thraupis episcopus
- Authority
- (Linnaeus, 1766)
- Order
- Passeriformes
- Family
- Thraupidae
- Genus
- Thraupis
Range and habitat
- Migration
- Resident species
Conservation
- Population trend
- rising
Photos
Distribution
Bird Calls
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