White-throated Shrike-Tanager

How to find it

Look for pairs in mixed-species flocks and listen for their chattering. Check the midstory and lower canopy of humid forest. Guides often begin a walk by listening for this bird, since the biggest flocks move with it. Learn it before you go, because finding the leader leads you to the rest of the flock. Around Arenal, the busy La Fortuna Waterfall trail can hold big flocks it leads, even with many tourists on the stairs.

How to recognise it

The male is mostly yellow with black on the head, wings and tail. The female is brown with a pale throat, a muted version of the male's pattern.

In Costa Rica the males differ by side of the country. Males in the Pacific lowlands show a black rump and black undertail coverts. Caribbean-side males lack these black patches.

So on any well-seen yellow male, check the rump and under the tail. One guide describes it as an oriole-like bird that hunts like a flycatcher, a useful picture to hold when yellow flashes out from a branch. Look for pairs rather than single birds.

What it sounds like

Recording: Dan MacNeal, CC BY 4.0, source, read 4 Nov 2026.

Behaviour and diet

It usually travels in pairs within mixed-species flocks, and family groups are also seen. It is noisy and active, yet it tends to perch fairly still, often stock-still in the middle levels of tall trees. Then it springs out to catch a flying insect, including insects flushed by another bird passing through.

It eats arthropods and sometimes fruit. One nest was in a low bush with two eggs. In foothill rainforest and Pacific slope lowland rainforest it is the usual flock leader, so finding it in mature forest means finding other birds too.

Where it lives

It lives in tall, humid lowland or foothill forest, from sea level to at least 750 m, and one account puts the upper range at about 900 m. It is mostly seen from the midstory to the lower canopy.

On the Pacific side it favours moist lowland forest, while on the Caribbean side it is more likely in foothills. On the Caribbean slope it ranges south to eastern Costa Rica, as far as Limón, and locally on the Guanacaste side. The Pacific form occurs from Puntarenas, south of the Gulf of Nicoya, to western Panama.

Similar birds

It replaces the Black-throated Shrike-Tanager to the south. That species lives from Mexico to Honduras, so the two do not overlap in Costa Rica.

Names and lore in Costa Rica

The official Spanish name in Costa Rica is Tangara Piquiganchuda. Other Spanish names are tangara gorjiblanca and frutero de garganta blanca, and Panama uses tangara gorguiblanca.

Status and conservation

It is a resident and a regional endemic (R-END) on the official Costa Rican bird list, described as uncommon to fairly common across its range.

Photography tips

Listen first, then scan. When the chatter starts, a mixed flock often arrives within minutes, so be ready. At Quebrada Gonzalez one guide watched it call and then sit in view for a long time, so wait for the bird to settle on a mid-level perch.