Blue Dacnis

Dacnis cayana

eBird describes the Blue Dacnis like this:  Small active warblerlike tanager with sharply pointed bill. Male blue with thin black mask, black throat and back. Female also distinctive, body entirely lime green with mostly blue head. Usually seen in pairs or small groups in the canopy of lowland and foothill forests, edges, and secondary growth. Often follows mixed feeding flocks. Feeds on fruit.

The Birds of the World website has this introductory information about this bird: 

The Blue Dacnis is a stunning inhabitant of humid lowland forest from Honduras to south to northeastern Argentina.  The Blue Dacnis is sexually dimorphic: the male primarily is bright turquoise blue with a black throat, back and tail, whereas the female is mostly green with a blue crown. Blue Dacnis are most often found foraging for nectar and insects in the tops of trees along forest edges or small clearings. When foraging for insects, the Blue Dacnis usually takes its prey from leaves, often with acrobatic maneuvers; the Blue Dacnis frequently pays particular attention to brown spots on green leaves, apparently seeking out leaf damage that might indicate the presence of an insect.

The common name for this species in Spanish is the Dacnis Azul (Hilty 2011, de Juana et al. 2012), and in Portuguese it is Saí-Azul (CRBO 2010). The etymology of Dacnis comes from the Greek daknis, an unidentified bird from Egypt (Jobling 2010). The specific epithet cayana was used along with cayanensis and cayanus in to refer to Cayenne or French Guiana; Cayenne was often used for species that were from an uncertain province thought to be in the Amazon (Jobling 2010).

I met my first Blue Dacnis at La Selva on the late afternoon of February 5, 2023.  There were several with a mixed flock high up in a tree visible at a distance from the mess hall, high up at the top of the canopy.  Using his scope, our guide Sam identified a female Scarlet-thighed Dacnis and several Blue Dacnis.  The mixed flock also included an oriole and a Red-legged Honeycreeper.  It was quite a colorful sight as the late afternoon setting sun illuminated the top of that tree!  I got some photos with my P1000, which should give you some idea of the scene we enjoyed that day.  To see my blog post that covers my visit to La Selva and watching these birds, look here.