Blue-necked Tanager Tangara cyanicollis

Blue-necked Tanager has a broad but discontinuous range. It is common and widely distributed in foothill and lower montane forests in the Andes from western Venezuela south to central Bolivia. There also is a disjunct population in the lowlands of south central Amazonia, in northeastern Bolivia and central Brazil, where in contrast it is largely uncommon and local. Furthermore, there is an apparently isolated population even further east in the cerrado of central Brazil, which was described from a single specimen. Blue-necked Tanager is a typically beautiful Tangara, characterized by its brilliant blue or violet hood, black back and and broad black breast band, and greenish straw wing coverts. The rump is pale, but the color of the rump varies geographically: typically the rump is silvery green or straw yellow, but the rump is blue in the subspecies of western Ecuador. Blue-necked Tanager usually forages in pairs or in family groups, which regularly follow large mixed-species flocks, often including a variety of other species of tanager.