Original Title: Rainforest Birds - Beryl-Spangled Tanager
|Beryl-spangled Tanager (Tangara nigroviridis) from Ecuador (Photo credit: Wikipedia)|
The Beryl-spangled Tanager is a colorful, tropical bird that inhabits the tropical regions of the north to northeastern South America. Tanagers can often be found in mixed-species flocks. This genus of tanagers is considered canopy dwellers, and will most often be found in the tree canopy. T. nigroviridis has three subspecies.
Beryl-spangled Tanagers can grow to about 11 inches in length and weigh up to about 40 g. It is mainly black with bright green to bluish green speckles, sometimes appearing like scales, which cover much of its body including the breast and wings.
Tanagers' diet typically consists of fruit. They have also been known to pick insects from leaves and the underside of branches. They forage most often between 2 and 9 m above the ground.
This species of tanager inhabits the Andean moist montane cloud forests. They reside in elevations between 900 and 3000 m, although they are most numerous between 1500 and 2400 m. Their range stretches across Venezuela, Bolivia, Columbia, Ecuador, and Brazil.
The Beryl-spangled Tanager builds cup nests constructed of mosses, usually in a tree fork. Eggs will appear in March. The female averages a clutch size of two eggs. The eggs are creamy white and speckled with brown and lilac. The eggs are incubated for a period of 13 to15 days. Both the male and the female will feed the nestlings insects and fruit. The young chicks will fledge the nest 14 to 20 days after hatching.