Green-headed tanager

Head and breast are a burning aquamarine, nape and wings lime green, the rump orange, and across the shoulders and throat it carries a black patch that puts everything else in order. In Portuguese they call it saíra-sete-cores and they are not exaggerating by much. The female is the same bird with the volume down, her back scaled.

It moves in small groups and joins the mixed flocks that work the canopy — that river of birds of different species that crosses the forest and is gone in a minute. It eats small fruit, berries and insects it hunts among the branches, and now and then nectar. It builds a cup-shaped nest where it lays two to four eggs; the chicks hatch after fifteen to seventeen days.