A blue bird (length 18 cm), that is often seen in gardens. It
eats mainly soft fruit, like ripe mango or papaya. But they eat
insects too and sometimes you can see them flying into the air to
catch flying insects like a flycatcher. These tanagers are social
birds and whole families will visit a garden or fly over. They
don't come to the ground often. What they do like, is taking a
bath in a gutter. It is one of the birds you will see most when
travelling trough Suriname.
A near family member is the palm tanager.
It is green in stead of blue and it prefers palms. You often see
mixed groups of the two tanagers and according to Haverschmidt
(1969) hybrids are sometimes found in the wild.
The first two beautiful photos were made by Louis des Tombe in
October 2007, John S. Dunning in Guyana and the third by K.
Dijkstra at the Anton de Kom university in Suriname. The one just
below the text was made by Ribot in the garden of mr. Lieuw Sjong
in Paramaribo of a blue-grey and a silver-beaked tanager birds
eating bananas and rice. The fifth picture is a young bird on its
nest, made by Leo Olmtak in November 2008 and then follows a
young bird seen by Johan Ingels in French Guyane. The next two of
birds eating ripe papaya in Paramaribo were made by Stephan
Ferrier and Carla Out. Last picture is of a bird caught in Guyana
by John Dunning.
Observations of the blue-grey tanager in Suriname. Blue for the coastal region, yellow for savanna and red for rainforest. More tanagers can be found in photo gallery 8.
| Distribution in Suriname (explanation) | |
| Coastal area |  |
| Savanna | |
| Forests | |
| Mountain forests |  |
| Sipalawini savanna | |
Names in
More pictures of tanagers from Suriname
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