Streaked Saltator

How to find it

Start in gardens and edge habitats on the southern Pacific slope, where this saltator mostly lives. Learn the slow whistled song before you go, because knowing saltator songs is one of the best ways to find them. Fruit feeders are the easiest place to meet it, since most saltators in Costa Rica visit them. Saltators are less shy than skulking birds like antbirds, so they are far easier to watch. Look for pairs, and check fruiting trees for small groups.

How to recognise it

This is a small saltator, about 18 cm long, and the field marks are easy to read in parallel.

Upperparts: plain olive green.

Underparts: olive with streaks.

Bill: large and black.

Face: a broken white eyering and a whitish eyebrow stripe.

Throat and breast: whitish, with dark streaks on the breast.

Belly: buffy white, with faint streaks on the sides.

Legs: blackish.

Both sexes look alike, so you do not need to sort males from females. The streaked breast is the mark to check first when a saltator lands at a feeder.

What it sounds like

Recording: Esteban Villa Restrepo, CC BY-SA 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

It is usually seen in pairs, and sometimes in small groups at fruiting trees. It eats fruit, flowers, seeds, tender buds and insects, especially ants and beetles. In Costa Rica it has been recorded eating the fruits of a Croton draco tree.

It usually sings from cover, and at dusk it sometimes sings during an aerial display up to 30 m above the ground. The species stays in one place all year and does not migrate.

Where it lives

In Costa Rica it is found only in the southwest. It is especially common in the Valle del General on the southern Pacific slope, where it mostly lives in gardens and edge habitats, and a few birds also turn up in the Central Valley.

Across its range it uses secondary forest, open scrubby areas, light woodland, pasture, farmland and gardens. It is common in dry scrub and shrubby clearings and is mostly found below 1600 m. In Andean valleys it reaches 2500 m, but that is a range-wide figure, not a Costa Rican one.

When to see it

Nesting in Costa Rica is reported between March and June, with most nests in April or May and more rarely in March or June.

Similar birds

In Costa Rica it more or less takes the place of the Grayish Saltator. Both use gardens and edge habitats, but the Grayish Saltator is the one found in the Central Valley. Buff-throated Saltator often shares feeders with it, and a tour group found it the most commonly seen saltator there, so check for streaks on the breast.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

The Spanish name used in Costa Rica is Saltador Listado. Other regions use other names: pepitero listado in Spain, saltador rayado in Peru, and lechosero pechirrayado in Venezuela.

Status and conservation

It is a resident on the AOCR list, and the IUCN lists the species as Least Concern.

Photography tips

Fruit feeders on the Wilson Botanical Garden patio attracted this saltator, so feeders there give close views.