Blue Gray Tanager

The Blue-grey Tanager is 18 cm long and weighs 35 g. Adults have a light bluish head and underparts, with darker blue upperparts and a shoulder patch colored a different hue of blue. The bill is short and quite thick. Sexes are similar, but the immature is much duller in plumage.

The song is a squeaky twittering, interspersed with tseee and tsuup call notes.

13-15 subspecies are commonly recognized, differing according to the exact hue of blue of the shoulder patch versus the rest of the plumage; they may be greyish, greenish or purplish-blue, with a lavender, dark blue or whitish shoulder patch. For example, T. e. berlepschi (endemic to Tobago) is a brighter and darker blue on the rump and shoulder, T. e. neosophilus with a violet shoulder patch occurs in northern Venezuela, Trinidad, eastern Colombia and the far north of Brazil, T. e. mediana of the southern Amazon basin has a white wing patch, and T. e. cana in the northern Amazon has blue shoulders.

 

 

Source: http://www.wikipedia.org/