Seeing red? Say hello to the summer tanager
That redbird in your yard may not necessarily be a cardinal.
It could be a summer tanager. Cloaked in vibrant red, — it’s a bird my grandfather called the “cardinal’s summer cousin.” It migrates here from winter homes in Central Mexico down to South America, where even in nonbreeding plumage, the bird strikes a pretty pose.
I saw scores of them landing in coastal woodlots in April. After crossing the Gulf of Mexico, they were headed to breeding grounds across much of the eastern and southwestern U.S., including Houston neighborhoods.
Features distinguishing summer tanagers from northern cardinals begin with its subtlety different shade of red plumes. Male summer tanagers in breeding plumage have rosehued feathers, whereas male northern cardinals in breeding plumage have crimson feathers and a black face mask.
Adult male summer tanagers are the only birds in North America with virtually an entire red plumage, making for easy identification. But immature males landing in coastal woodlots this spring looked like unkempt vagabonds with splotchy red heads and orangish body feathers.
We know the female north-
ern cardinal differs from the showy male with her red-tinted pastel brown, making her quite gorgeous. But the poor female summer tanager has only yellow-orange plumage besmirched with rusty-red, as though she is splattered with red paint.
Summer tanagers quickly can be told from northern cardinals by their long, stout, bonecolored beaks. They are designed to feast on insects, with a particular preference for bees and wasps. Cardinals have robust conical beaks shaped like a nutcracker and employed to crush seeds and crunch beetles.
A slight peak on the crown of a summer tanager gives it a crested appearance, but it’s nothing like the dramatically pointed, triangular crest that crowns a northern cardinal.
The tanager’s song sounds a bit like the tune of a robin with raspy notes, sounding like cheerily-cheerily-cheerup, but the bird utters a unique bouncing call, which sound like pick-etuck-tuck.
I always thought my grandpa had been mistaken about summer redbirds being cousins to cardinals because summer tanagers were classified in the Thraupidae or tanager family of neotropical birds.
But scientists ultimately have determined that summer tanagers have more in common with cardinals than tanagers; they reclassified them in the Cardinalidae family.
Grandpa was right, after all.