The Silver Beak Tanager

It occurred to me the other day while visiting the Memphis Zoo that there are a lot of fascinating creatures in the zoos of the world that ought to be more digitally recorded and available. There is a tremendous amount of history (can I call it natural history history?) and zookeeper expertise cloistered behind the fences of these animal parks that goes unrecorded. This is especially true, I think, of some of the smaller creatures that don't draw big crowds - but that might be unique organisms (or specialties) of a particular zoo.

So here is a picture of the silver beak tanager (Ramphocelus carbo) from northern South America, a creature that I have never seen in the wild and probably never will. Yet the good folks at the Memphis Zoo have taken care to make it available for visitors to see. What a beautiful bird.