Carmiol's Tanager

Overview

Carmiol’s Tanager (Chlorothraupis carmioli) is a chunky, blunt-billed bird of the forest interior — not the flashy display-piece that most visitors expect from the word “tanager.” Adults are dull olive-yellow, darker and greener on the back, paler and more yellow on the throat and breast. The sexes look alike. At 17 cm it is noticeably larger than most other tanagers in the park, and its posture — heavy, deliberate, and low in the vegetation — marks it out from the quicker, more arboreal Tangara species.

The species feeds on insects, small fruits, and seeds gleaned at a slow pace through the lower understory. It is a regular participant in mixed-species flocks, pairing with antbirds, woodcreepers, and other understory species that travel together through the forest. The voice is a distinctive buzzy, rasping call — one of the cleaner audio identifiers in Tortuguero’s understory.

Why Tortuguero

Carmiol’s Tanager is a Caribbean-lowland specialist. The wet, dense, tall lowland forest of Tortuguero is core habitat — it does not occur at elevation or on the drier Pacific side of Costa Rica. Its presence in the park indicates mature, structurally intact forest interior; it is rarely seen in degraded edges or secondary scrub.

For birders working the trail system, it is one of the more reliably encountered understory species, particularly in sections of older forest where the mixed-species flock activity is sustained. The contrast between this species’ drab olive and the shimmering blues and greens of the Tangara tanagers in the same area makes it a useful calibration species when sorting a feeding flock.

How to see them (honestly)

• Walk slowly on the forest trails — Sendero El Gavilán and the main nature trail — in the first two hours after dawn.
• Listen for the buzzy call; then wait and scan the vegetation at knee-to-waist height systematically.
• Mixed flocks passing through are your best chance: count what’s accompanying the flock from the edges inward.
• They are not rare, but they are quiet movers. Patience outweighs luck here.

Status note

Least Concern globally with a stable population. The species’ narrow endemic range on the Caribbean lowland slope means it is effectively absent from most of Costa Rica — Tortuguero and the lowland Caribbean corridor are among its most accessible sites for anyone wanting to see it. No significant threats are documented at the population level, but as with all forest-interior specialists, the species is sensitive to forest fragmentation and the loss of old-growth understory structure.