Unmistakable in his handsome suit of royal blue, he finishes his stunning look off with a cap of pure white and a fiery red crest!

Meet the Diademed Tanager

The diademed tanager (Stephanophorus diadematus), is a species of Neotropical bird in the tanager Thraupidae family. Measuring about 7 inches in length, the male of this species is distinguished by deep blue plumage, darker at the wings and tail, with a lighter blue shoulder patch.

His black-fronted head is capped off with a white crown (diadem), on top of which is a small red tuft.

The female is duller when compared to the male, and her crown is more grayish.

These birds are endemic to and found mostly in open areas in southern Brazil, northeast Argentina, and Uruguay.

In Uruguay, these birds like to inhabit dense thickets where they perched often on the tops of trees and bushes at the edge of montane forests including Araucaria forests, woodlands, parks, and gardens.

Photo Courtesy of  Andrebaptista at English Wikipedia. – Transferred from en.wikipedia to Commons by Berichard using CommonsHelper / CC BY-SA 2.5

Having a beak designed for cutting and crushing, this species likes to eat buds and leaves, especially those of the banana and strelitzia plants. It is thought they might also eat insects if given the opportunity.

The breeding season commences depending on this species’ location when a cup-shaped nest is built into which two eggs are laid and incubated by the female. After the eggs have hatched both parents feed the young a diet that consists of worms, grubs, and fruit. Beyond this, there is little information on the breeding process for this species.

This species does not approach the thresholds for Vulnerable under the range set out by the IUCN.