Buff-bellied Tanager

The buff-bellied tanager is 13 to 14 cm (5.1 to 5.5 in) long and weighs 14 to 17 g (0.49 to 0.60 oz). The species is sexually dimorphic. Adult males have a rich dark cinnamon-rufous crown and nape on an otherwise pale orange-buff head and throat. Their back, rump and uppertail coverts are olive-gray. Their upperwing coverts are olive-gray with a brownish tinge and their primary coverts are dusky. Their outer flight feathers are dusky with thin grayish olive edges and the inner ones dusky with brownish edges and an overall brownish tinge. Their tail is olive-gray with a brownish tinge. Their underparts are mostly pale orange-buff with a whitish center to the belly and buff-tinged whitish undertail coverts. Adult females are overall duller than males. They have a cinnamon-tinged olive-gray crown and nape, a strong cinnamon tinge on the ear coverts, and orangish-tinged buff throat and underparts. Both sexes have a dark brown iris, a thin dark gray to blackish bill with often a paler and bluer mandible, and horn-gray legs. Juveniles resemble adult females but with more grayish olive upperparts and more yellowish underparts.

The buff-bellied tanager is found in the basin of the Marañón River from extreme southern Zamora-Chinchipe Province in furthest-south Ecuador into far northwestern Peru's Cajamarca and Amazonas departments. It inhabits semi-arid landscapes including shrublands, the edges and canopy of open forest, scrubby and brushy clearings, and scrubby and brushy bands along watercourses. In elevation it ranges between 650 and 1,200 m (2,100 and 3,900 ft) in Ecuador and between 450 and 2,000 m (1,500 and 6,600 ft) in Peru.

The buff-bellied tanager feeds primarily on small arthropods. It usually forages in pairs or small family groups, at all levels of its scrub/forest habitat and also in adjoining tall grassy areas. It takes prey from clusters of dead leaves and by gleaning from live ones, and it occasionally probes flowers for prey.