Family:
The summer tanager is a medium-sized, chunky songbird with a big body and large head. Adult males are bright strawberry-red all over with black eyes and a pale thick, blunt-tipped bill. Females are mustard yellow with greenish back and wings and a pink or horn-coloured bill.
Their whistling song is similar to the American robin, and despite their colour they can be hard to spot as they spend their time high up in the forest canopy, sitting still as they wait to catch insects in the air.
Try our interactive bird identifier
Summer tanagers eat mainly bees and wasps. They catch them in flight and beat them on a tree to kill them, then rub them against a branch to remove their sting. They will also eat insect larvae and before their winter migration will put on large fat deposits to fuel their flight.
Summer tanagers are found across the southern United States, as far north as Iowa. They breed in open wooded areas and coniferous forests. They are long-distance migrants moving further south in the winter to Mexico, Central America, and northern South America.
