Thursday, March 29, 2018

Tanagers great and small

I think antbirds (or for normal people trogons) are the hallmark bird of the neotropical lowlands, but tanagers would have to be in the conversation for the standard bearer in the mid-elevations.

Yanacocha had an interesting range of tanagers coming to their feeders.  What is a tanager?  Nobody really knows, but these Black-chested Mountain-tanagers looked more like small crows in clown costumes than the Scarlets that will start filtering through in a month.


Scarlet-bellied Mountain-tanagers were also unique to these upper mid-elevations.


Still too big? Here's Masked Flowerpiercer, a bird I thought would be common throughout the trip.  We only saw it at Yanacocha.

Another size down is Glossy Flowerpiercer
 
Finally Capped Conebill, a bird the size of a warbler
 It's not much bigger than the Starfrontlet hummingbird next to it.

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