The Story
I photographed this Blue-necked Tanager (Stilpnia cyanicollis) at the Mirador Turístico Don Yo, on the old road from Villavicencio to Bogotá, Colombia, in January 2020. It lives from Colombia to Bolivia, in lowland and montane forest and in heavily degraded former forest. It has a blue hood and throat, with turquoise to straw-green wing coverts and rump. Fruit is its main food, along with berries, flower blossoms and insects picked from leaves. The female builds a well-hidden cup nest of moss, and both parents feed the chicks, sometimes with help from other birds.
I made this frame with a Pentax K-1 and the HD Pentax-D FA 150-450mm f/4.5-5.6, at 1/250 sec, f/5.6, ISO 1600. IUCN lists the Blue-necked Tanager as Least Concern, and its population appears to be stable.
©2020 Adam Rainoff Photographer
The bird
The Blue-necked Tanager (Stilpnia cyanicollis) belongs to the family Thraupidae (Tanagers and Allies) in the eBird/Clements taxonomy.
Source: eBird.org (opens in a new tab)
Conservation
Least Concern on the IUCN Red List (assessment published 2018), with the population trend listed as stable. Source: IUCN Red List