Red-headed Tanager, Piranga erythrocephala

Red-headed Tanager, Piranga erythrocephala candida, Male. Photographs taken within the Reserva Chara Pinta, El Palmito, Sinaloa, April 2019. Photographs and identifications courtesy of David F. Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

The Red-headed Tanager, Piranga erythrocephala canada, is one of two subspecies of Red-headed Tanager, both of which are found in Mexico. It 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 cabecirroj.

The Red-headed Tanager is small in stature and sexually dimorphic. The males are very distinctive being olive above and bright yellowish-olive below with a red head and throat, black lores, a narrow black eye ring, dusky upperwing coverts and flight feathers edged in yellowish-olive. The females are similarly colored but lack the red head and throat and have paler bellies. Their bill is dusky transitioning to blue gray below, their iris is brown, and their legs and feet are gray.

The Red-headed Tanager reside in semi-humid and moist montane pine-oak forests, semi-deciduous and evergreen forest, open woodland mixed with scrub and along forest edges and within plantations at elevations between 900 m (2,950 feet) and 2,600 m (8,530 feet). They are known to move southward during non-breeding season and are found at lower elevations. They forage in pairs or in small groups, often in mixed species flocks, from the midstory into the canopy, primarily consuming insects and small seasonal fruit and berries. Their nests are composed of a cup of twigs and other vegetation found well up in a tree. Their life spans are unknown. Their biology and behavioral patterns have been poorly studied and documented.

The Red-headed Tanager is endemic to Mexico and is found in the mountains of western Mexico from southern Sonora and southern Chihuahua south to eastern Oaxaca at the Isthmus of Tehuantepec. The candida subspecies is found in northwest Mexico from southern Sonora and southern Chihuahua south to Jalisco, and south to Michoacán and Mexico outside breeding season.

From a conservation perspective the Red-headed Tanager is currently considered to be of Least Concern with stable, widely-distributed populations.