I was at Timanu Reserve in Colombia the morning we were leaving and someone called out with some excitement that blue-necked tanagers were on one of the feeders. I hustled over and was started by their beauty.
They have a light blue hood that covers the head, nape and throat and a black bill and black mask that surrounds a black eye. The back and underparts are black. Wing coverts, wing edges and rump are turquoise, and/or yellowish-green and the posterior underparts are purple or turqoise.
Looking at a map, they are found in a sliver of moist tropical or subtropical lowland forest or montane forest from Venezuela, through Colombia, Ecuador, Peru and Bolivia and then the lowlands of southern Amazonia.
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| Blue-necked tanager range - from Wikipedia. |
They eat fruit, berries, flower blossoms and insects.
Truly a stunning bird, and one I wonder about how it fits into Darwinism.
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