Slate-colored Grosbeak

The slate-colored grosbeak is 19 to 20.5 cm (7.5 to 8.1 in) long and weighs 41 to 53 g (1.4 to 1.9 oz). The species is sexually dimorphic. Adult males of the nominate subspecies are mostly slaty blue. Their lores, face, ear coverts, sides of the throat, and upper breast are black. Their wings are blackish with wide slaty blue edges on the coverts and on the outer webs of the secondaries. Their tail is blackish. Their throat and underwing coverts are white. Adult females are overall duller than males with no black on the face or throat, greenish slate underparts, and a gray-white throat. Subspecies S. g. saturatus is slightly darker overall than the nominate. Both sexes of both subspecies have a deep brown iris, a bright orange-red or red bill, and dark horn to black legs and feet. The species closely resembles its sister black-throated grosbeak, which however is darker with more black on the face and a black throat.

The slate-colored grosbeak has a disjunct distribution. Subspecies S. g. saturatus is the more northerly of the two and has a much smaller range. It is found on the Caribbean slope from eastern Honduras south through Nicaragua and Costa Rica, continuing through Panama on the Caribbean and Pacific slopes, and south on the western slope of the Andes through Colombia and into Ecuador to far northern El Oro Province. The nominate is found in the Amazon Basin and Guiana Shield from the southeastern third of Colombia south on the eastern Andean slope through Ecuador and Peru into Bolivia and from Colombia and Peru east through the southern Venezuelan states of Amazonas and Bolívar, the Guianas, and Brazil north of a line roughly from western Mato Grosso do Sul northeast to the Atlantic in Maranhão. The slate-colored grosbeak inhabits the interior and edges of humid forest and mature secondary forest. In the Amazon Basin it occurs in both terra firme and várzea forest. In Central America it ranges in elevation from sea level to 1,250 m (4,100 ft) though only to 750 m (2,500 ft) in Honduras and 1,200 m (3,900 ft) in Costa Rica. In Colombia and Ecuador it reaches 1,200 m (3,900 ft) and in Peru it is mostly below 1,100 m (3,600 ft) but locally occurs up to 1,800 m (5,900 ft). It reaches 1,300 m (4,300 ft) in Venezuela and 1,200 m (3,900 ft) in Brazil.

The slate-colored grosbeak's diet has not been studied but is known to include seeds and insects. It forages from the forest's mid-level to its canopy, usually in pairs, and sometimes joins mixed-species feeding flocks.