Turquoise tanager

The turquoise tanager was formally described in 1766 by the Swedish naturalist Carl Linnaeus in the 12th edition of his Systema Naturae under the binomial name Tanagra mexicana. His description was principally based on Mathurin Jacques Brisson's Le tangara blue de Cayenne that he had described and illustrated in 1760. The type locality is Cayenne in French Guiana. The turquoise tanager is now placed in the genus Tangara that was introduced by Brisson. Four subspecies are recognised: • T. m. vieilloti (Sclater, PL, 1857) – Trinidad • T. m. media (Berlepsch & Hartert, 1902) – east Colombia and Venezuela • T. m. mexicana (Linnaeus, 1766) – the Guianas to central Brazil • T. m. boliviana (Bonaparte, 1851) – southeast Colombia to east Ecuador, east Peru, west Brazil and north Bolivia The white-bellied tanager (Tangara brasiliensis) was formerly treated as a subspecies. ==Description==

Adult turquoise tanagers are long and weigh 20 g. They are long-tailed and with a dark stout pointed bill. The adult is mainly dark blue and black, with turquoise edging to the primaries. Most races have yellow lower underparts, but this is paler, more cream, in the nominate subspecies found in north-eastern South America. The Trinidadian race, T. m. vieiloti, has a darker blue head and breast and more vividly yellow underparts than the mainland taxa. Their song is a fast squeaky chatter tic-tic-tic-tic-tic. ==References==