Western Tanager
Piranga ludoviciana

Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Subphylum: Vertebrata
Class: Aves
Order: Passeriformes
Family: Cardinalidae
Genus: Piranga

Audio for Species

Call
Song
Call/Song

from Macaulay Library

Species Related Links

Additional Western Tanager Pictures

Description

Length: 6.3-7.5 in (16-19 cm) Weight: 0.8-1.3 oz (24-36 g) Wing length: 3.5-3.7 in (9-9.5 cm)

Adult male breedin has a bright red face. Their nech underparts, rump, and shoulder is yellow, The back, wings and tail are black, and they have a white wing bar. The male's basic plumage the head is teoolw with a reddish wash, and the back feathers have yellow or olive tips. Adult female has a yellow head and underparts. Olive-gray back and gray wings with white wing bars. Immature plumages similar to female.

Habitat, Range, and Feeding

They winter in open mountain pine woodlands, second growth, and parks and gardens. Their breeding habitat is open coniferous and mixed deciduous-coniferous forests. They nest in trees on branches far out from the trunk. Their nest is madeup of twigs, bark, grasses, and rootlets for the outer cup, and finer grasses, hair, or plant fibers. The clutch size is 1 to 5 eggs, that are bluish green spotted with brown. The incubation is 13 days and about 15 days to fledging.

The Western Tanager's diet is mostly insects during the breeding season, and fruits and berries when available. The rest of the year, fruits and berries constitute a larger portion of the diet. They need pigment for their diet to get the red plumage, it takes deposits of rhodoxanthin; surmisably from the insects the eat.