Western Tanager, Piranga ludoviciana

Western Tanager, Piranga ludoviciana, Male. Photograph taken within a residential community in Alamos, Sonora, April 2018. Photograph and identification courtesy of David F. Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

Western Tanager, Piranga ludoviciana, Male. Photograph taken within a residential community in Hereford, Arizona, May 2011. Photograph and identification courtesy of Bob Behrstock, Sierra Vista, Arizona (naturewideimages.com).

Western Tanager, Piranga ludoviciana, Male. Photograph taken within a residential community in Alamos, Sonora, May 2018. Photograph and identification courtesy of David F. Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

Western Tanager, Piranga ludoviciana, Female. Photograph taken in the greater Santa Barbara area, Santa Barbara, California, September 2021. Photograph courtesy of Dr. Tom Bartol, Carlsbad, California.

The Western Tanager, Piranga ludoviciana, is a member of the Cardinalidae Family of Cardinals and Allies, which has forty-nine individual species that have been placed into fourteen genera and one of nine global members of the Piranga Genus. They are known in Mexico as piranga carirroja.

The Western Tanager is a medium-sized songbird that is sexually dimorphic with a black back, scapulars, wings and tail; their median coverts, rump, uppertail coverts, hind neck and upperparts are bright yellow; the tips of their greater covers are whitish; and, the anterior portion of the head or entire head is red with a dull yellow bill, and bluish rays on their legs and feet. The males are easy to recognize due to their showy yellow and black plumage and red head; the females have olive-green upperparts, highly variable underparts, grayish wings with two yellowish-white wing bars, a grayish brown tail, and minimal red tinges on the head. The males red plumage pigment is from deposits of rhodoxanthin that they obtain from dietary yellow pigments they obtain from insects, which in turn are obtained from plants. They have a stout and elongated down-curved bill that has a tooth on the upper mandible with a dark upper bill that is tinged with green that has a straw yellow lower cutting edge, the iris of the males is grayish brown or black and burnt umber in females, and their legs and feet are light slate color with pale toe soles.

The Western Tanager is known to breed in Northern Baja California. They are medium distance complete migrants that are winter visitors to Mexico’s central highlands and Pacific Slope, found in Baja California Sur and from Southern Sonora south to Guatemala. They are also found within the Atlantic Slope from southern Tamaulipas to Guatemala. They are typically found in open to dense mountainous woodlands or pine, pine-oak or fir, in partly open country with scattered trees, along river edges in woodlands and in gardens, orchards and parks at elevations below 1,400 m (4,600 feet) being more numerous above 600 m (2,000 feet). Their diets consist primarily of insects, supplemented with berries and fruits on a seasonal basis. Their life spans are unknown. They are not conspicuous, spending the majority of their time well-concealed in foliage and very little about their biology and behavioral patterns has been documented. They are known for their deliberate song.

From a conservation perspective the Western Tanager is currently considered to be of Least Concern with stable, widely-distributed populations. Since they reside in a wide variety of habitats, they are not overly disturbed by human development.