A clear look at a male Western Tanager is like looking at a flame: an orange-red head, brilliant yellow body, and coal-black wings, back and tail. Females and immatures are a somewhat dimmer yellow-green and blackish. These birds live in open woods all over the West, particularly among evergreens, where they often stay hidden in the canopy. Nevertheless, they’re a quintessential woodland denizen in summertime, where they fill the woods with their short, burry song and low, chuckling call notes.

Western Tanagers are stocky songbirds; fairly small yet noticeably larger and heavier-bodied than warblers. They have short, thick-based bills and medium-length tails.

Adult male Western Tanagers are yellow birds with black wings and a flaming orange-red head. The wings have two bold wingbars; the upper one yellow and the lower white. The back and tail are black. Adult females have red restricted to the front of the face, with subdued yellow-green plumage on the body. Immatures in fall lack red, while in spring show less red on the head relative to that on adults of their respective sex.

Western Tanagers forage slowly and methodically along branches and among leaves or needles of trees. They eat primarily insects, supplemented with small fruits in fall and winter. They sometimes catch insects in the air. In spring and summer , males sing their hoarse, American Robin-like song frequently.

Western Tanagers breed in coniferous forests, though they are not particularly choosy about which conifer species. They breed in juniper-pine mixtures at low elevation, up to spruce-fir near the treeline. During migration, you may find them in nearly any shrubby or wooded habitats, and even in fairly open country. Their winter habitat in Middle America is generally in pine-oak woodland and forest edge.