Blue-gray Tanager

How to find it

Look in gardens, town parks and forest edges. Listen for noisy pairs or groups, then follow the sound. Check fruiting trees and fruit feeders, where bananas and plantains draw it in. Near houses in the Central Valley, one birder describes pairs flying overhead giving squeaky calls first thing in the morning. A mixed flock with Palm Tanagers is worth scanning for both species.

How to recognise it

Look for these marks:

A pale blue-gray head and underparts.

A darker blue-gray back.

Bright sky-blue wings and tail.

A blackish bill.

A white eye ring, narrow and broken.

Adults are about 15 cm long. Females look grayer than males. Young birds are duller and greyer than adults, with at most a slight bluish tint on the head and upperparts and little or no blue on the shoulder. Field guides describe Costa Rican birds as having little or no pale shoulder patch, so do not wait for one before you decide.

What it sounds like

Recording: Arturo Benavides Mendoza, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

Pairs stay together all year, and after the breeding season they sometimes form loose flocks. The bird searches foliage for insects and spiders, and peers under horizontal branches, rails and power lines.

It eats many kinds of berries and arillate seeds, and sometimes gathers in numbers at fruiting fig trees. It also takes nectar from balsa and poro flowers. One source reports breeding from March to July in Costa Rica, with two clutches a year. The nest is a neat cup, usually of two eggs.

Where it lives

It lives in open areas with trees, suburban gardens, city parks, second growth and humid forest edges, sometimes down into the canopy.

It is resident from the lowlands to about 2000 m, and sometimes up to 2300 m. It is common to abundant across most of Costa Rica, but uncommon in the dry northwest, where it stays in humid areas around houses.

Similar birds

The Palm Tanager is the usual confusion, especially in backlit conditions. It is a more uniform gray with some olive tones and has a black patch on the wing, while the Blue-gray looks paler overall. The Palm Tanager is common in Costa Rica and sometimes feeds in small mixed groups with the Blue-gray.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

In Costa Rica the bird is called viudita or viuda, meaning widow. A birding blogger finds this odd, because Costa Rican widows do not wear blue. Elsewhere in Spanish it is also called azulejo or azulejo de jardín. The nearby Palm Tanager has its own nickname, viudita de la costa, which makes it a close cousin of the viudita.

Status and conservation

Resident (R) on the AOCR list, common to abundant over most of Costa Rica, and Least Concern with the IUCN, which describes it as widespread with a fairly dense population.

Photography tips

The species is active, noisy and fairly trusting. It tolerates people and comes to cultivated fruit around homes, which makes it easy to approach in gardens. A fruit feeder or a fruiting tree is the surest place to wait for it.