Black-capped Tanager

About the Black-capped Tanager

The black-capped tanager (Stilpnia heinei) is one of the many species of Neotropical bird in the family Thraupidae. It lives in the mountains of Ecuador, Colombia, and Venezuela year-round. This bird can often be found in open landscapes, alone or in pairs, hiding under branches of trees and bushes. Its natural habitats are subtropical or tropical moist montane forests and heavily degraded former forest.

The black-capped tanager was described in 1851, from a type specimen collected in Colombia. It is a member of the genus Stilpnia in the tanager family Thraupidae. In Spanish, it is locally called "Tangara gorrinegra" or "Tangara coroninegra". The black-capped tanager is a songbird (Passeriformes). The tanagers are a very diverse group with over 300 species that account for more than 10% of all birds in the Neotropics. The genus name Stilpnia was proposed in 2016 instead of Tangara for T. heinei in order to match the phylogenetic relationships among tanagers. This was based on DNA analysis done in the tanager family. This bird is most closely related to the straw-backed tanager (Stilpnia argyrofenges) from which it diverged during the late Pleistocene... Wikipedia →