Buff-throated Saltator

How to find it

Go birding in the humid foothills and lowlands and listen first, since the song usually announces it before you see it. Forest edge and second growth suit it well, especially below about 1,500 m. Gardens and feeders are worth watching, because saltators visit them. Expect it to sit partly inside vegetation, so give it a few patient minutes. Heard all around Arenal Volcano and recorded at La Selva, it is a bird of the Caribbean side as much as the Pacific.

How to recognise it

Adults are olive-green above and gray below, with a gray head, a greenish crown and a short white eyebrow.

The throat is buffy, edged with black lines on each side, and the lower belly is buff. The bill is thick and black, and the legs are black. Males and females look alike. The bird is about 20 cm (8 in) long.

Young birds are duller, with a white-mottled blackish throat and breast and brownish marks underneath.

The larger Black-headed Saltator has a white throat and a black crown. This bird has a peachy-buff throat and a dark grayish-olive crown.

What it sounds like

Recording: Cole Wolf, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

This is a quiet bird. A Costa Rica resident describes it eating fruit, berries and seeds in trees, and it feeds at low and middle levels, sometimes with mixed-species flocks. It is often mostly inside vegetation, which makes it hard to film, though a farm observer in Costa Rica sees it fairly often.

Breeding in Costa Rica runs from March to August. The nest is a bulky cup of plant material, usually 0.3 to 2 m up in a bush or tree. The clutch is two eggs, and the female alone incubates.

Where it lives

Across its range it lives in dense vegetation in humid lowland forest and at forest edges, and it also visits bushy suburban gardens. In Costa Rica it ranges from sea level up to about 1,800 m (5,900 ft).

It occurs on both the Caribbean and Pacific slopes, except the far northwest and far southwest. It has also been seen in a garden in Atenas, Alajuela.

When to see it

Breeding in Costa Rica runs from March to August.

Similar birds

It is one of four saltator species in Costa Rica, with the Grayish, Black-headed and Streaked. All have somewhat similar voices and facial patterns. The Grayish Saltator is very gray and favours gardens and second growth. The Black-headed does not reach the Pacific coast, so a saltator with a buff throat there is not a Black-headed.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

The AOCR Spanish name is Saltator Gorgianteado, also written saltador gorgianteado. Costa Ricans also call it Chayotero, Chojui, Comepuntas and Sinsonte Verde. The genus name Saltator is Latin for 'dancer' or 'jumper', and the species name maximus means 'the greatest'.

Status and conservation

Resident (R) on the AOCR list, common across most of Costa Rica but uncommon in the northwest and the western Central Valley, and rated Least Concern by the IUCN.

Photography tips

Saltators spend less time hiding than some skulkers, so they are much easier to photograph than the Slate-colored Grosbeak. Even so, this one is often mostly inside vegetation, so watch feeders, gardens and bushy edges where it comes into the open.