Summer Tanager, Piranga rubra

Summer Tanager, Piranga rubra cooperi, Male. Photograph taken within a residential community in Hereford, Arizona, April 2010. Photograph and identification courtesy of Bob Behrstock, Sierra Vista, Arizona (naturewideimages.com).

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

Summer Tanager, Piranga rubra rubra, Males. Photographs taken in the coastal region of Guatemala, March 2020. Photographs courtesy of Dr. Tom Bartol, Carlsbad, California.

Summer Tanager, Piranga rubra rubra, Male. Photograph taken in the coastal region of Costa Rica, February 2023. Photograph and identification courtesy of Dr. Tom Bartol, Carlsbad, California.

Summer Tanager, Piranga rubra cooperi, Female. Photograph taken within a residential community in Alamos, Sonora, May 2018. Photograph and identification courtesy of David F Smith, Alamos, Sonora.

Summer Tanager, Piranga rubra rubra, Females. Photographs taken in the coastal region of Costa Rica, February 2023. Photographs courtesy of Dr. Tom Bartol, Carlsbad, California. First bird identified by Tom. Second photo Identification courtesy of Bob Hillis, Ivins, Utah.

The Summer Tanager, Piranga rubra cooperi and Piranga rubra rubra, are two of the three subspecies of Summer Tanager, all three of which are found in Mexico at various times of the year. They are a member of the Cardinalidae Family of Cardinals and Allies, which has forty-nine members placed in fourteen genera, and one of nine global species of the Piranga Genus. They are known in Mexico as piranga roja.

The Summer Tanager are large in stature and sexually dimorphic with the males being a striking bright rosy-red; adult females being yellow to mustard color. Their bill is light brown with a paler tomia, their iris is brown, and their legs and feet are yellowish brown.

The Summer Tanager is typically found in forest edge, second-growth woodland, and shrubby clearings, as well as in parks and gardens in towns, and in woodland thinned for coffee plantations at elevations up to 2,000 m (6,560 feet). They are generally solitary individuals that forage in mid and upper levels of forest trees making them difficult to locate. They can be found in migratory flocks of up to 30 individuals. The primarily consume bees and wasps but also consume a wide variety of flying and nonflying insects. Their diets are also supplemented with fruits (bananas, blackberries, mulberries, and pokeweed) on a seasonal basis. They are also known for their unique song. Their life spans are up to five years. 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.

The Summer Tanager is found in northern parts of Mexico during the summer months and winters in all parts of the southern half of the country. The cooperi subspecies is found in northeast Baja California, Sonora, northern Durango, Coahuila and Nuevo León during the summer months and in central and southern Mexico, from Southern Sinaloa south to Michoacán, Morelos and Guerrero during the winter. The rubra subspecies is found in Michoacán, Puebla, Veracruz and Yucatán.

From a conservation perspective the Summer Tanager is currently considered to be of Least Concern with stable, widely distributed populations. In some regions their populations have significantly declined which has been attributed destructions of their riparian forest breeding habitat and deforestation within their wintering range.