Bird Profile

Western Tanager

One of the most startling birds in the West, and one of the least interested in your seed feeder. If you want a Western Tanager in the yard, offer fruit and water during migration and accept that it is a short visit.

The Western Tanager (Piranga ludoviciana) is the bird people phone about. A yellow body, black wings with two bars, and a head washed in flame orange to red is not something you expect in an ordinary yard, and the usual reaction to a first sighting is to assume an escaped cage bird. It is not. It is a common breeder in western conifer forest that most people simply never see, because it spends the summer high in the canopy.

It is also, honestly, a poor feeder bird. Western Tanagers eat insects and fruit. They do not eat seed, and a yard that runs on sunflower and nyjer will never register one. The birds that show up in yards are usually migrants, often forced down by weather, looking for fruit and water rather than for a feeder.

That does not make them unattainable. It changes what you offer and when. Orange halves, grape jelly, live mealworms and a shallow water source, put out during the two or three weeks in spring and again in late summer when tanagers are moving through, give you a real chance. Sunflower seed gives you none.

This profile covers identification, the odd pigment behind that red head, when tanagers actually pass through, and the small set of foods and habitat changes that make a yard worth stopping in.

How to identify a Western Tanager#

Breeding male

Bright yellow body, jet black back, wings and tail, and a red to orange head. Two wingbars: the upper one yellow and broad, the lower one thin and white. The bill is pale, stout and slightly hooked, which is a good structural mark. The amount of red on the head varies a lot between individuals and through the season, from a fully flame-colored face to just a wash across the forehead and chin.

Female and immature

Much plainer and much more often misidentified. Yellowish green overall, brighter yellow on the underparts and rump, with a gray back, dark wings and the same two wingbars. The head is unmarked yellow-green. The stout pale bill and the contrast between the gray back and yellow underparts are the marks to use.

Fall and winter males

A male in fall keeps the black wings and wingbars but loses most or all of the red, with the yellow duller and washed with green. A late-summer bird with black wings, two bars and no red head is still a Western Tanager.

The birds most often confused with it are Black-headed Grosbeak, which is orange-brown rather than yellow and has a massive conical bill, Bullock's Oriole, which is orange with a black eyeline and a sharply pointed bill, and American Goldfinch, which is much smaller with a short conical bill. In the East the equivalent birds are Scarlet and Summer Tanagers, neither of which has wingbars. The wider sorting exercise is in yellow birds.

The red head, and where the color comes from#

Most red and orange in birds comes from carotenoid pigments taken in through food and processed in the body. The Western Tanager is unusual: the pigment in its head is rhodoxanthin, which is rare in birds and which they are not thought to be able to manufacture themselves. The working assumption is that the bird acquires it from its diet, most likely by way of insects that have fed on plants containing it.

That explanation is plausible and widely repeated, but the chain from plant to insect to feather has not been fully pinned down, and the evidence is thinner than the confident phrasing you will see in field guides suggests. It is worth knowing as a good hypothesis rather than a settled fact. What is clear is that the amount of red varies between individuals and is brightest in spring.

Where and when you will see one#

Western Tanagers breed in open coniferous and mixed forest, especially Douglas fir, ponderosa pine, spruce and aspen edges, from southeast Alaska and the southern Northwest Territories south through the mountains to west Texas and northern Mexico. They reach further north than any other tanager in the world. They winter from Mexico south to Costa Rica.

For a yard, the calendar is narrow:

The sightings people remember almost always come from a cold, wet spring storm. When temperatures drop in May and flying insects vanish, migrating tanagers come down out of the trees and pile into yards looking for fruit. If you want one, the fruit needs to already be out when that weather arrives. Timing your offerings to migration is covered in feeding during migration, and this is a strong pattern across the Mountain West and the Pacific Northwest.

Why seed will not bring one in#

This is worth stating plainly, because a lot of effort gets wasted on it. Western Tanagers are insect and fruit eaters with a stout but not seed-cracking bill. They glean caterpillars, beetles, wasps and termites in the canopy, hawk insects in flight, and take berries and soft fruit. They are not adapted to husking seeds and they do not do it.

Fruit, jelly and mealworms: how to offer them#

Halve an orange and push it cut side out onto a nail, a spike or a dedicated fruit feeder, or lay halves on a platform feeder where they are visible from above. Apple and pear halves work too. Put fruit somewhere open and high enough to be seen from the canopy, not tucked under an eave. The general case for fruit is made in fruit for birds.

Grape jelly goes in a shallow dish holding a tablespoon or two at a time, never a deep well of it. Plain grape jelly with no artificial sweetener is what to use, and it should be refreshed daily in warm weather. The full guidance, including why quantity matters, is in jelly for orioles. The same oriole feeders that serve jelly and orange halves are exactly the right hardware here.

Live mealworms in a smooth-sided dish are the strongest draw in a cold snap, when insects are grounded and a tanager needs protein it cannot catch. A few dozen worms in a shallow bowl on a platform is enough.

Water does more than food#

If you only change one thing, make it water. Tanagers drink and bathe, and a shallow basin with a rough bottom and about 1 to 2 inches (2.5 to 5 cm) of water is used by species that will never touch a feeder. Moving water is better still: the sound of a dripper or a small fountain carries and pulls birds down out of the canopy. See bird baths for the basics and moving water for drippers and misters.

The habitat that actually holds them#

Beyond migration, the yards that get repeat tanager visits are the ones with fruiting native plants and unsprayed insects. Serviceberry, elderberry, chokecherry, mulberry, hawthorn and native cherries all get used, and so do the caterpillars and beetles those plants support. Planting for that is set out in native plants for birds, and the case against broad-spectrum spraying is in pesticides and birds.

Tanagers moving through unfamiliar yards in migration are also at higher risk of hitting glass, since they arrive fast and low from cover. If you are putting fruit near a window, treat the glass first, using the spacing and screening approaches in preventing window strikes.

A realistic plan for a Western Tanager#

1. Mark the last week of April through May on the calendar, and again mid August through mid September.
2. Put orange halves out at the start of that window, before you see a bird, and keep them fresh.
3. Add a small dish with a spoonful of plain grape jelly, wiped and refilled daily.
4. Keep live mealworms on hand for cold, wet spells, which is when tanagers appear.
5. Run a bird bath year-round, with a dripper if you can, sited in the open near a tree.
6. Plant at least one native fruiting shrub and stop spraying insecticide.
7. Accept that a visit may last a morning. That is normal for this species.

Set your expectations accordingly. A Western Tanager is not a bird you keep, it is a bird you catch. The yards that see them are the ones that were ready before the weather turned, and the same setup pays off for Baltimore and Bullock's orioles, American Robins and Cedar Waxwings in the meantime.