Carmiol's Tanager

How to find it

Listen first, because calls usually come before the view. Carmiol's Tanagers and Black-faced Grosbeaks calling together usually point to a mixed flock of forest birds nearby. The flock can be too far into the forest to see, so expect some misses. Follow a flock when the terrain allows, since doing so gave good views of the tanagers with other forest birds. One Caribbean-slope birder got close looks in the afternoon, when activity picked up in the forest. Fruit feeders and fruiting melastome bushes are worth a pause too.

How to recognise it

This is a robust, evenly colored bird about 17 cm long. It is dull olive green above and paler olive below, and the throat is slightly yellower than the rest of the underparts.

Look for these marks together:

Stocky body and short tail.

Thick black bill.

Yellowish throat and underparts.

A yellow throat that contrasts with a greener head.

The sexes differ a little. The male has a streaked throat. The female has a plain pale yellow throat, paler underparts than the male, and a yellowish patch in front of the eye.

There is no bold color to hang an identification on, so the combination of shape, bill and throat does the work.

What it sounds like

Recording: Ryan F. Mandelbaum, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

Carmiol's Tanager forages in the understory and middle levels of wet forest, in noisy flocks. It eats insects such as beetles, roaches, crickets and katydids, and also fruit, especially berries.

Guides describe these tanagers as the leaders of mixed flocks, and following one has given good views of antshrikes, woodpeckers and other tanagers alongside them. Birders at a Caribbean-slope lodge watched several bathing at the hummingbird pools. At Arenal, small flocks were seen in the forest and also feeding on insects under the streetlights.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it lives on the Caribbean slope and lowlands, and it is found only very locally on the Pacific side. Its range runs from eastern Nicaragua through Costa Rica and Panama to far northwest Colombia.

Across that range it is fairly common but local in the understory and edges of humid foothill forest, at about 300 to 1200 m elevation. It lives in tropical and subtropical moist lowland forest and also uses heavily degraded former forest. It seems to prefer wet valleys and dense growth along stream edges, in humid foothill and lower subtropical forest.

Similar birds

Its plain plumage can be confused with female tanagers. A stocky build, yellowish throat and underparts, and thick black bill set it apart, and female White-winged Shrike-Tanager and Gray-headed Tanager are good birds to compare it with. Lemon-spectacled Tanager and Ochre-breasted Tanager look similar, but their ranges do not overlap with this species. Andean Olive Tanager also looks very similar, yet song and other calls separate the two easily, and it is not found in Costa Rica.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

In Costa Rica the bird is called Tangara Aceitunada. Other Spanish names are tangara de Carmiol and frutero de Carmiol. Colombians call it guayabera aceitunada, and Nicaraguans call it tangara olivácea. The name honors Franz Carmiol, a German immigrant who lived and collected specimens in Costa Rica.

Status and conservation

It is listed as a resident endemic (R-END) on the AOCR list, and the IUCN rates it Least Concern, though the total population is thought to be declining.