Blue-grey Tanager (Thraupis episcopus)
Blue-grey Tanager, Caxiuanã, Pará, Brazil, November 2005 - click for larger image Brazil

The Blue-grey Tanager is the northern and western replacement of the Sayaca Tanager (Thraupis sayaca) to which it is very similar. Indeed, they are so similar that a case could be made for lumping them together, however their voices are different.
Blue-grey Tanager, Palmarí, near Tabatinga, Amazonas, Brazil, September 2003 - click for larger image There are 13 subspecies which tend to have different shades of blue to white on the shoulders. The first photo is of a bird at Caxiuanã, Pará so is probably the nominate subspecies, T. e. episcopus. Here we can see that the shoulder is almost white and the wings are noticeably blue while the rest of the bird is indeed blue-grey.

The second photo was taken in Brazil just south of the Amazon and just across from the Peruvian border so it is probably T. e. coelestis and shows a very large white shoulder patch and wing-bar.

Its range stretches from southern Mexico to south of the Amazon river. It is found in a variety of habitats from forest borders to gardens and it eats on both fruit and insects.

There are illustrations in Ridgely & Tudor, Volume 1, Plate 17; Hilty & Brown, Plate 51; and Isler, Plate 15.
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