Tanager Information … Tanager Species … Tanager Species Photo Gallery
The Golden-hooded Tanagers (Tangara larvata) – also known as Tangara Capuchidorada in Spanish – is a medium-sized passerine bird.
Description:
This tanager averages 5 inches or 13 cm in length and weighs about 19 g.
The adult male has a golden head with a bluish face and black eyemask edged with violet blue above and below. The upperparts of the body are black except for the turquoise shoulders, rump and edgings of the wings and tail. The flanks are blue and the central belly is white.
Females have a greenish-yellowish tinge to the head, often with black spots on the crown (top of the head), and more extensively white underparts.
Juveniles are duller, with a green head, dark grey upperparts, off-white underparts, and little blue in the plumage.
Distribution:
Southern Mexico south to western Ecuador.
It resides from sea level to 1500 m altitude in the canopy of dense wet forests, along the Caribbean and southern Pacific slopes. They spend most of their time high up in tree canopies, in forest interior and semi-open sites such as forest edges, clearings and vegetated gardens.
Golden-hooded Tanagers occur in pairs, family groups, or as part of a mixed-species feeding flock.
Breeding:
The cup nest is built in a tree fork or in a bunch of green bananas, and the normal clutch is two brown-blotched white eggs.
This species often double-clutches (lay one clutch immediately or shortly after the chicks from the first clutch hatched), and the young birds from the first clutch assist with feeding the second brood of chicks.
Calls / Vocalizations
The Golden-hooded Tanager’s call is a sharp tsit and the song is a tuneless rattled series of tick sounds.
Diet
They eat small fruit, usually swallowed whole, and insects.
Species Research by Sibylle Johnson
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