Return of Bird of the Week: White-shouldered Tanager

The White-shouldered Tanager is a close cousin to the White-lined Tanager featured here two weeks ago. It’s distinguished from its cousin by the much larger, white shoulder patches instead of the thin, sometimes invisible, white wing lines. The White-shouldered often shows a bit more purplish iridescence in its black than does the White-lined. Like the White-lined, this species is strongly sexually dimorphic. Females are yellow with a gray face. Or so WC has been told; WC has never seen one. White-shouldered Tanagers have a wide distribution, from Honduras in the north to central Brazil in the south and from the…