Scarlet Tanager
Scarlet Tanager Piranga olivacea
Sound (176 KB)
DESCRIPTION:
Size:
7 inches (18 cm)
Abundance:
• Common
Quick Identification:
• Male: scarlet red head and body
• Black wings and tail
• Female: Yellowish below, greenish above
Identification Tips:
• Pointed, but fairly stout bill
• Inhabits treetops
Adult male breeding:
• Brilliant scarlet red plumage
• Shiny black wings and tail
• Plumage held in Spring and Summer
Adult female:
• Yellow underparts
• Olive back
• Gray wings and tail with greenish feather edges
• Nonbreeding and immature plumages similar to female but males often have blacker wings
and tails
Similar species:
• The male Scarlet Tanager is striking and easily identified. Male Hepatic and Summer
Tanagers are entirely red. Female plumages can be told from similar female Summer Tanager
by plain yellow, not orange-yellow, underparts. Female Western Tanager has wing bars.
Female Hepatic Tanager has more orange underparts and a darker cheek.
HABITAT:
Mature deciduous and mixed forests, suburban shade trees, wooded parks. Tends to remain
motionless high in canopy of tree, making it difficult to see.
NESTING & FEEDING:
BREEDING: Deciduous forest and woodland, mixed deciduous-coniferous forest. 1 brood.
Mating system is monogamous.
DISPLAYS: Courtship: male hops about on low perches, spreads wings and displays his back
to female perched above.
NEST: On horizontal branch, well out from trunk, 20-30 feet above ground; loosely built of
grass, rootlets, forbs, twigs, lined with fine grass, forbs, rootlets. Female selects site
and builds nest. Built in 2-7 days.
EGGS: 4 (2-5) Bluish, greenish, marked with browns, often wreathed. 0.9" (23 mm).
CHICK DEVELOPMENT: Female incubates. Incubation takes 13-14 days. Development is altricial
(immobile, downless, eyes closed, fed). Young leave the nest after 9-11 days. Both sexes
tend young.
DIET: Including few other terrestrial invertebrates. Young fed insects, few berries. Also
gleans from bark.
CONSERVATION: Winters from Panama and Colombia s, e of Andes, to n w Bolivia, in variety
of forest, woodland, and scrub. Common cowbird host; adults recognize female cowbird as
enemy.
NOTES: Where range overlaps with Summer Tanager, the two species respond aggressively to
each other's songs and countersing; coexist by partial habitat shift maintained by
interspecific aggression. Male occasionally feeds incubating female. Female broods for
about 3 days, and in cold and rain. Females tend to forage higher than males; females
forage by hawking far more than do males. No apparent dialects in advertising song.
WORLD RANGE:
Piranga olivacea SCARLET TANAGER. Deciduous forest, woodland, parks. From e N.
Dakota, se Manitoba, w,s Ontario, sw Quebec, Maine, New Brunswick and Nova Scotia s to e
Nebraska, e,c Kansas, e Oklahoma, c Arkansas, wc Tennessee, ec Mississippi, n,c Alabama, n
Georgia, nw S. Carolina, N. Carolina. Winters in Panama and w South America s to Bolivia.
Vagrant to California. A few hybrids with P. ludoviciana are known.
