From Opus

Male of Pacific form
Photo by Jeluba
Osa Peninsula, Costa Rica, December 2010

Lanio leucothorax

[edit] Identification

Male mostly yellow with black on head, wings, and tail. Female brown with pale throat and otherwise showing a shadow of the male pattern (darker where the male is black, paler where it is yellow).

Variation: male in the Caribbean parts of Costa Rica as described, but shows black rump and undertail coverts in the Pacific lowlands.

[edit] Distribution

Honduras, Nicaragua, Costa Rica, and Panama.
Uncommon to fairly common in its range.

[edit] Taxonomy

Four subspecies are recognized:

• L. l. leucothorax from extreme eastern Honduras to eastern Nicaragua and eastern Costa Rica
• L. l. reversus in northwest Costa Rica
• L. l. melanopygius in southwest Costa Rica and on the Pacific slope of western Panama
• L. l. ictus in extreme northwest Panama

Has in the past been considered conspecific with Black-throated Shrike-Tanager and may form a superspecies with it.

[edit] Habitat

Moist lowland forests in the Pacific, more likely to frequent foothills on the Caribbean side.
Occurs from lowlands up to 900m.

[edit] Behaviour

Feeds on arthropods and occasionally fruit.
A noisy and active species, usually seen in pairs or families and in mixed-species flocks.
Breeding recorded in May. One nest was placed in a low bush and contained 2 eggs.
A resident species.

[edit] References

1. Clements, J. F., T. S. Schulenberg, M. J. Iliff, B.L. Sullivan, C. L. Wood, and D. Roberson. 2012. The eBird/Clements Checklist of Birds of the World. 6th ed., with updates to October 2012. Ithaca: Cornell Univ. Press. ISBN 978-0801445019. Spreadsheet available at http://www.birds.cornell.edu/clementschecklist/downloadable-clements-checklist
2. Garrigues and Dean 2007. The birds of Costa Rica - a field guide. Cornell University Press. ISBN 978-0-8014-7373-9
3. Del Hoyo, J, A Elliott, and D Christie, eds. 2011. Handbook of the Birds of the World. Volume 16: Tanagers to New World Blackbirds. Barcelona: Lynx Edicions. ISBN 978-8496553781

• List of references

[edit] External Links