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Scarlet Tanager | Piranga olivacea
Zwartvleugeltangare | Tángara escarlata
The Scarlet Tanager is a medium-sized tanager that breeds in eastern North America and winters in South America. In breeding plumage the male is scarlet with jet-black wings and tail. In the guide area it is only a passage migrant, in spring and autumn.
Voice
The call is a hoarse, two-part chip-burr. The song, mostly heard in spring, is a hoarse, robin-like series of phrases.
Recording: steve — CC BY-SA 4.0 · converted to mono · xeno-canto
Identification
16–18 cm. A fairly compact tanager with a short, thick, pale bill. The breeding male is bright scarlet with black wings and tail. In autumn the male is yellow-green with black wings; in spring blotchy red-and-green transitional plumages occur. The female is olive-green above and yellow below, with greyish-olive, slightly darker wings without wing bars.
Confusion species
Females of Summer Tanager Piranga rubra are warmer ochre-yellow, with a larger bill and wings no darker than the back. White-winged Tanager Piranga leucoptera and Western Tanager Piranga ludoviciana have distinct wing bars.
Habitat
On migration in the canopy and edges of humid lowland and foothill forest, secondary forest, shade coffee and gardens with fruiting trees, mainly in the lowlands and foothills. It eats insects and fruit.
Where the bird is most at home, classified by the vegetation units of Mexico and Central America.
Range and movements
Migrates mainly through eastern Mexico, across the Gulf of Mexico and the Yucatán Peninsula, and along the Caribbean slope of Central America to Panama. Winters in north-western South America, mainly on the eastern side of the Andes from Colombia to Bolivia. Outside the guide area it breeds in the eastern United States and south-eastern Canada.
- Passage (Mar–Apr, Oct–Nov)
- dark = core range, pale = thinly spread
How and when to look
Most often seen in April and October, after northerly winds, on the coast of Yucatán and on Cozumel. Inland mainly in fruiting trees at forest edges.
Conservation status
Not threatened (LC). Common on its breeding grounds; depends on forest along its migration route and in its winter quarters.
Scientific name
Piranga olivacea | (Gmelin, 1789)
Gmelin described the species in 1789 as Tanagra olivacea; because it was later moved to another genus, the author and year stand in brackets. The genus Piranga was introduced in 1808 by Vieillot. Piranga comes from the Tupi tijepiranga, the name of an unidentified small bird. olivacea is Latin for 'olive-coloured', after the olive-green female and winter plumage. The specimen the first description was based on came from New York.