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Tanagers in Cerro Jefe, Central Panama (1 Viewer)

njlarsen

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Hi all,
I visited this location on August 26 this year. I know I saw male Bay-headed, Rufous-winged and Emerald tanagers plus some others that are not so green. I thought I took many photos of female/immature Rufous-winged and no photos of the other species. Looking at the images now, I have doubt, because Birds of the world states:
Immature: The young resemble the adult female, though duller in appearance. The blue belly is mixed with dull white, and the crissum is a pale yellow color.
AND: even immature Rufous-winged Tanagers have traces of rufous on the wings (Hilty and Brown 1986). Though the rufous on females and immatures are not as apparent as in the males, a patch of rufous usually shows on at least the flight feathers (Ridgley and Greenfield 2001).
So, the first of these images seems OK for an immature bird - I think I see rufous on the edge of the primaries seen from below. The second photo I am more in doubt - I cannot see any rufous. At the time of taking the images I thought these might be the same bird and there is only two seconds in between and the branches around seems to be the same. So what did I get photos of?
Niels

q1a P1240107.jpgq1b P1240111.jpg
 
Thank you to the 38 people who have looked at this thread.
Niels
Not got a good candidate. Initial thought was "not a tanager, perhaps a greenlet" but lesser greenlet has a slightly different beak, and more importantly, a dark eye. So do all the "obvious" tanagers. I don't think the colours match rufous-winged particularly well...sorry
 
I should have included the below image before. I think what you see in the previous image is only the cornea and the pupil but not the iris which I think is dark.
Niels
q1c P1240119.jpg
 
I should have included the below image before. I think what you see in the previous image is only the cornea and the pupil but not the iris which I think is dark.
Niels
View attachment 1467402
hmm This looks very different. We can see the bill is actually a tanager's, and the underside now looks blue-green rather than grey. Based on this I'd plump for juvenile rufous-winged. We can see reddish on the top of the head: Vallely suggests it should be confined to the face in Bay-headed.
 
With those green wings and bluish underparts it surely can only be a moulting Bay-headed?
Well, bluish underparts are found on both species in Panama. See e.g.,

Neither species has similar photos in Macaulay. The text for RW Tanager states, as I included above, for the immature: The blue belly is mixed with dull white, and the crissum is a pale yellow color.

For Bay-headed, the text states that the immature is (apart from bill shape) similar to female green honeycreeper.

The thing I do not know is how restricted the rufous on the wings can be in RwTa. Could it for example be limited so that you need the spread wing to see it?
Niels
 
The thing I do not know is how restricted the rufous on the wings can be in RwTa. Could it for example be limited so that you need the spread wing to see it?
Niels
It's a good question. I concentrated on the distribution of the red in the head. I should have looked more closely at the wing. Although the head pattern is wrong for young bay-headed, surely we'd see some hint of red in wing if rufous-winged. So, bay-headed...
 
I had also reached out to the guide I had for the day when this photo was taken. He is in agreement that this is immature Bay-headed Tanager.
Niels
 
I had also reached out to the guide I had for the day when this photo was taken. He is in agreement that this is immature Bay-headed Tanager.
Niels
OK. Looks like the head pattern in Vallely is wrong for bay-headed. Or perhaps it's because it's illustrating a juvenile.
 
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