The female is much duller, with brownish upperparts, reddish brown underparts and a black bill.

There is considerable plumage variation between the various subspecies, differing mainly in the degree of contrast between the upperparts and the throat and breast.

The bulky cup nest is usually built in a bush, and the normal clutch is two green-blue eggs blotched with black-brown.

[2] These are social birds which eat mainly fruit, but vines, nectar, short grass[3] and insects are also taken.

The silver-beaked tanager was first described by the German naturalist Peter Simon Pallas in 1764 and given the binomial name Lanius carbo.